


All Is Violent, All Is Bright

by jusrecht



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-21
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2018-02-11 14:55:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2072499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jusrecht/pseuds/jusrecht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had never wanted to see someone dead so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from an instrumental piece by _God Is An Astronaut_ , which was also the song I listened in repeat while writing this. As for the timeline, it’s three years before TYL arc, as will be made clear in the second paragraph.

1.  
“You want to see me.”

It was not a question. Sawada Tsunayoshi smiled at him, a brittle little thing that covered none of his old unease. At twenty-one, he was now stronger, calmer, but old fear ran deep and Hibari knew he still saw him in his white school shirt with a black jacket draped over his shoulders and a red emblem on his arm.

“I want to ask for your help, Hibari-san,” he said, respectful if slightly nervous. The light shone much too brightly overhead, leaving the colour of his hair ablaze like angry sunset. Hibari frowned. He never liked coming to the Vongola Headquarters, and the tone Sawada was using reminded him to a similar situation almost a year ago, opened with a similar line and hint of politeness. When the Vongola Decimo had asked for his permission to use Namimori ground, to dig the earth and turn her soil into their new hideout, he had left bruises on the younger man’s body which hadn’t healed for months.

He could still feel some on his own, the lingering ache of several broken ribs and more than a few concussions. But the pain had smoothed the path to his consent somewhat, and wrapped in rolls of bandages, Sawada had grinned at him, easily eclipsing Gokudera’s mighty scowl.

“About the new recruits,” he continued as Hibari maintained his ominous silence, “perhaps, ah, Hibari-san can help to oversee their training? We have more than the usual number this time around and Ryouhei-san cannot handle them all. Just a few, the special and talented ones,” he added hurriedly under narrowed eyes. “I know you hate crowds, but if you don’t mind to take two or three, please.”

“I have no time for this,” Hibari said, but his eyes swept across tired features and noted the lack of a guardian who had always stood behind the Vongola’s leader, glaring at every hint of insubordination.

“Of course if you’re busy, then it can’t be helped,” Sawada smiled, again that brittle little thing. Hibari knew enough about politics and its ways to feel disgust filling him at the sight. He hated naiveté, but what had slowly sprung in place of Sawada’s since he had sat on the throne of Vongola was worse.

His biting retort was hindered by knocking from the door. A man slipped in, his face a shade paler once he noticed who was in the room frowning at the Tenth.

“The Cavallone, Sir, they have arrived,” he articulated rapidly, all the while keeping as much distance as possible from the Cloud Guardian. Hibari awarded him a long, disdainful look.

“Ah, yes,” Sawada nodded. “Please show them in.”

“Is that all?” Hibari asked briskly as the man hastily scrambled out. He had no desire to remain in a room which would crowd itself with a group of herbivores in matter of seconds.

“Yes,” Sawada rose from his seat, his smile strained on a tense, weary face. “Thank you for coming, Hibari-san.”

He turned around but halted in mid-step. The air seemed to hover around him, a drape of silk in a reverent pause. “I’ll talk to Sasagawa this evening,” he said, just loud enough for the other to catch.

Sawada was startled into silence – and then perhaps, a few seconds later, he would slip into a grin and a long string of awkward gratitude. Hibari made sure that he was out of earshot when they did manifest.

–

2.  
It was exactly ninety-two paces from the meeting hall to his room. It ended in the middle for most, on the forty-third count, in front of a painting of an old harbour in Venice before an impending storm. Built into the wall was a mechanism which enabled him to expose a doorway, after inserting a string of codes and identifying himself via his Dying Will flame. The rest of the forty-nine paces was a labyrinth riddled with death traps for those who managed to force entry without proper verification.

He wasn’t surprised, however, to find Cavallone waiting in his room after he had finished with Sasagawa.

“Who let you in?”

“No one.” Ever so brash, so confident. Hibari looked away with a snort. There were only two people other than him who knew how to get in and were allowed to do so. Obviously he would have to get the answer from either of them come morning – and make clear of the rules with the guilty party.

“Don’t blame him,” Dino said, eyes half closed, head resting against the windowsill. The moonlight trapped his blond hair in muted silver, a corner of the colourless painting under the night’s brush. Hibari turned on the lamp to ruin the effect, causing the older man to blink.

“Sawada didn’t offer you a room?” he asked blandly, pulling his tie loose and letting it fall into a careless sprawl across the desk. Dino followed his hand’s movement with a half smile on his lips.

“I declined,” he replied cheerfully, and then rose to his feet, graceful and dangerous moulded into one. Hibari watched him walk over, watched the smile curve into a smirk, sharper at the edges. He didn’t resist when his hands were removed from an unfastened button.

“My flight is tomorrow morning,” Dino spoke again, an intimate murmur to his ear. His fingers were deft, climbing down column of buttons and slipping beneath his shirt, following a familiar pattern. Hibari allowed him a moment’s victory, and then struck – a hard, sudden shove on the shoulders, a few small sidesteps, and the right positioning of a leg and a knee. Dino ended up lying on the futon, breathless and laughing.

“Oh, Kyouya. Kyouya.”

“You’re getting old, Cavallone,” he mocked, his weight resting heavily on top of the other man’s waist. Dino sat up or maybe he was pulled down and their mouths were crushing each other’s, tongue and teeth and the faint taste of blood. Hibari found his hands pressing against clothed chest and returned the courtesy by ripping the other man’s shirt. It earned him a low purr of amusement, vibrating in his mouth, down his spine.

“And patience is never for the young, hm?”

He silenced it with a deeper kiss. Dino was smiling, laughing again. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it last week, for your birthday,” he apologised between kisses, lips caught in the tangle of words. Hibari growled – he couldn’t care less about _birthdays_ , his not an exception – and pushed him down flat on the futon. Dino’s grin was sharply victorious.

“I have a present, you know.”

“Just shut up.”

“You don’t want to know what it is?”

Dino’s grin only faltered when it broke into splinters of gasps, his eyes shut in concentration, pleasure sweeping all over him. Hibari rocked against the hot flesh inside him, his not-quite-smile pensive and vague as he leant down, scraping his teeth against Dino’s neck and watching the other man moan beneath him.

–

3.  
The thing with weaklings and herbivores, he frowned, was that they flocked together.

His lips thinned at the sight of Cavallone and his men, their steps crudely echoing each other’s. The corridor was narrow enough as it was and Hibari was itching to brandish his tonfas, or at least to feel their cold, solid weight in his grip when Dino sniffed trouble and quickly ordered them out of the way before ‘dear Kyouya beats them into soggy pulp’.

He was a stark presence in the hall dimmed by closed walls and no window, cropped from a different canvas. Somewhere along the years, he had forgone his old trademark jacket for a long white coat. It lent him an older, more mature appearance, one befitting his age and status better. The truth was Dino only couldn’t wear black. One too many funerals, he had murmured, lips brushing the top of Hibari’s head, _and everything about you is already much too black, Kyouya._

“I’ll be going for a while,” he announced, bright and cheerful for a morning so early – he could still feel his head throb.

Hibari failed to see what it had to do with him and told Dino so, in a scathing voice. He got a fond laugh and a casual shrug of shoulders in return.

“Who knows, you may miss me.” Too simple, it didn’t make sense. “I know I will.”

When he was pressed to the wall and kissed, he considered the pleasant pressure on his lips and on the back of his neck. It had happened far too many times, which sometimes still felt too few – like some too long, and the rest too short. This one was a mishmash of four. He gritted his teeth when Dino stepped back to a reasonably safe distance, in time to avoid a direct hit from silver steel.

“Come visit me in Italy,” he still dared to speak, his hand casually plunged into the coat – most likely, fingering the thick handle of a devoted whip.

Hibari threw him a look that chilled even fire. “It’s up to me, Cavallone.”

“Of course.” The nod of his head, the smile on his face was that of a gentleman, but his voice sank like a knife. “Always has, Kyouya. And always will.”

It was the last time he saw Dino.

–

4.  
The first time had been on his sixteenth birthday.

_Happy birthday, Kyouya._

_Get out, before I bite you to death._

_I bring you a gift._

_Get out._

_A chance to spar with me._

His grin was sharp and feral when he pinned his former tutor on the wet earth. Dino made a choking sound, the tonfa forced down against his windpipe, but wit survived and he managed a blasé smile.

“There was a puddle– I slipped.”

His voice was strained, gasping. Hibari’s grin made a sudden turn into brutal, his grip merciless on the hard metal. “Your balance sucks.”

“Yeah, yeah.” The whip had fallen with a splash, now ringed in mud. “Move away. I’m dying here...”

The man in black, Cavallone’s right-hand man was looking at him, knuckles white on a tense elbow, his cigarette long since crushed under iron heels. Hibari shot him an expressionless look sidelong. His victories might not have been as frequent as he wanted against the young mafia boss, but they were not all that rare either. Another glance, and then he let go – not a moment’s lapse, only the indifference of all victors toward pathetic ( _lying, cheating, manipulative_ ) herbivores – and Cavallone suddenly moved. His vision swam when the back of his head hit the ground, and the older man was smirking down at him.

“Your guard sucks.”

Hibari snarled and trashed, his tonfa a blinding flash as thunder crackled above them. Saved once more by years of surviving under gunfire, Dino had narrowly avoided a clean hit to his face and made a small, disapproving noise.

“Now, now, Kyouya, the spar is over.”

“The hell it–”

He gasped, his breath stalled somewhere in the length of his throat. The bolt of pleasure shot through him again and his hips bucked in involuntary response, his weapons digging into dirt and mud instead of the opponent’s flesh. Cavallone’s laugh was an echo of discordant shades in front of his ears.

“Just lie back and let me.”

The words would have made him bristle, but his focus splintered. He remembered the raindrops, cold talons on his face, rivulets along the hollow of his neck. He remembered the drumming sound of it, heavy and static, nothing short of overwhelming as the earth shuddered under the onslaught. He remembered abandoning his tonfas, bartering their unwavering loyalty for something much more alien and vague as his fingers grasped and pulled at military-green jacket. Dino was looking at him, still smiling, now with a tinge of hysteria and some morbid fascination in the curve of his lips.

“Shit, Kyouya,” he murmured, his voice weaving between the staccato of beating rain, breaking it from within. “You’ve never done this before.”

“Fuck you,” he bit out, but the words overlapped each other, slipping into a blunt, unintelligible moan as his body tightened and he came. The world blanked out for a few frozen seconds, and then he felt fingers in his hair and opened his eyes with a snarl.

“Get off.”

Dino’s eyes gleamed, and then he was kissing him so hard Hibari could feel his lips bruise. He growled, his composure restored, and bit down, tasting the sharp tang of blood in his mouth with some amount of satisfaction.

“That’s more like it.” Dino was grinning, wiping the red that bloomed on his lips with the back of his hand. The rain washed it away.

The man in black was still looking at them, silent as a shadow.

–

5.  
The day had barely yielded to night when Yamamoto came to him with an offer for a spar. Hibari fixed him a look which would have smothered most people, but Yamamoto had always been a man of his own – not unlike him, perhaps, in that respect. His smile didn’t falter, but he didn’t repeat the invitation only for the sake of painting silence with words.

The dojo still smelled of polished wood and dry, summer breeze. It was rarely used, nowadays. Kendo was an art appreciated by few, understood by even less. When it came down to self-defence, automatic pistols won an overwhelming odd against swords and other more conventional weapons. Even Sawada had succumbed to tradition and took lessons in the shooting range – only for safety measures, he had explained when Hibari hadn’t even asked. His grasp on the Italian language was improving, now that he spent seven out of twelve months in a year scuttling across the country. To blend in with his famiglia better, making sure that none felt left out.

Yamamoto retrieved his _shinai_ and folded the cover into a neat heap, putting it out of the way at a corner. Its blade glinted when he blocked an opening attack, the edge of his surprise blunted by a smile. Hibari smiled the half smirk he always wore during a spar. He tolerated the Rain Guardian better that he did the rest of Vongola, including the Decimo himself. He didn’t butt in, didn’t nag, didn’t hover. His invitations were open, promising everything and expecting nothing. Most of the times, he was a disappointment. Most of the times, Hibari left him on the floor nursing bruises and cuts, a thin trail of blood on his katana as it morphed back to a bamboo sword.

Most of the times, he didn’t care that Yamamoto grinned up at him, weaker but stronger all the same.

“As usual,” Yamamoto admitted, with a nonchalant grin which had grown seamless over the years. Perhaps he had perfected it in front of mirrors, scrubbing blood and dirt off his hands in the dingy bathroom of a back-alley hotel at the end of every mission. Hibari gave him a look, a cutting retort at the tip of his tongue when Gokudera walked in.

There was too much noise in his steps, as if his goal was to make his presence known to everyone in the room. Hibari found himself favoured with a curt nod, filtered little to none of its underlying dislike.

“Cavallone didn’t show up,” Gokudera said to Yamamoto, hands thrust deep into his pockets. His restlessness was now slightly more pronounced.

Yamamoto wiped his hands on his hakama. “It isn’t unusual, is it?” he asked, careful not to look at Hibari.

“No.” A pause. “Not really.”

“Are you worried?”

“I’m not.” Gokudera sounded aghast, insulted almost. A few seconds ticked by and his expression slowly folded into a frown. “But I can tell Jyuudaime is bothered by the news. I mean, it isn’t unusual to cancel an appointment, but Cavallone always sends a message if he does that.”

“Maybe he’s detained.”

“By what?”

The silence was a foreboding one. Hibari was already halfway toward the door when Yamamoto’s voice reached him. “Do you know anything, Hibari?”

He shrugged and said, with the kind of indifference that crippled worse than disdain, that it was none of his business. Gokudera scowled, the Storm ring gleaming dangerously from his left middle finger, and Yamamoto laughed his mild, noncommittal laugh.

Nothing had changed.

–

6.  
The stone staircase leading to the lowest level of the Dormiglione hideout echoed his firm, quiet footfalls off mossy walls. The corridor was dark, its only salvation the pale speckles of ray slipping in through cracks on the wall. The air was damp and cold, rank with the smell of dry blood and mould that seemed ages old.

Hibari wrinkled his nose, dodging a barrage of arrows, a trap his presence had triggered, and parrying the second volley with his tonfas. The arrows clattered to the floor, harmless now as his eyes swept over rows of heavily barred cells. There was no one in this floor, no half-mad scientist who could be coerced to share his erudite secrets of boxes and rings. The entire hideout was empty. Sawada had given him a wrong lead. Again.

“Kyou-san,” Kusakabe’s voice came from the staircase, “we found a prisoner upstairs. He’s still alive.”

There was a tentative pause, dragging the comma at the end of the sentence. Hibari waited, eyebrows arched slightly. The uncomfortable look was somewhat disturbing to see on a face as firmly set as Kusakabe’s.

“He’s... ah, I think you better see for yourself.”

He followed his second-in-command to the upper level. The ‘prisoner’ was a man of about thirty of age with dirty blond hair cropped short military-style. He was laughing, shaking on the floor, his lipless mouth hideously curved upward under a pair of punctured eyes. His chest heaved with each cough-like sputter, and what was visible of his skin was a parade of rotting wounds that testified to long, heavy tortures.

“Who is he?” Hibari asked, distaste in his mouth.

“There’s a tattoo on the back of his left shoulder.” Kusakabe’s voice was oddly incisive. “Covered by lesions, but it’s the Cavallone.”

The man was still laughing, the sound growing shrill, hacked into sharp beats that reminded him of a man inches away from a strangulated death. Hibari contemplated killing him, and would have done so if not for Kusakabe who said quickly, “I’ll take him to the hospital, Kyou-san. If he recovers, we probably can learn what happened here.”

He didn’t nod, but when he left, the half-dead laughter was deafening his ears.

It was the fifth month.

–

7.  
Cavallone was a liar.

Hibari had been introduced to this fact one summer afternoon. High school, not unlike junior high, had been a whirl of teachers and students stuttering and scurrying out of his way as he pinned the red badge to the left arm of his jacket. Dino had seen all these and mentioned at one occasion, exasperated but amused, that _believe it or not_ education had its merits.

On that particular afternoon, however, he was dutifully silent when he imposed himself on the Chief of Disciplinary Committee’s office for the fourth time or so that week. Sawada had been his permanent excuse for the entire string of visits – business, Vongola and Cavallone, two young bosses of the mafia and the current sad state of the world. Hibari only smirked every time Dino leant in and kissed him on the mouth.

“Excuses.” And then, of course, he bit him.

The next day would be the annual summer festival in Namimori. He was drifting off to sleep, appreciating the silence which very seldom accompanied the older man’s presence, when the picture of quaint perfection was ruptured by a light humming tune. Steel-grey eyes cracked open, glowering at the occupant of the other couch who was absentmindedly flipping a coin with one hand, lips pursed slightly.

Flipping a coin.

His fingers touched the twin weapons hidden up his sleeves, but his eyes were focused on the glint of silver, following narrow curves and vertical parabolas which defined its flight. It was rising, falling for one, two seconds, and then landed on the back of one thumb. A casual flick flipped it to the side of another finger, longer, steadier, and a second flick sent it airborne once more. Dino’s face was a mask of faraway contemplation as the ritual met ends and beginnings again and again.

Five minutes, perhaps more, had tiptoed passed before he noticed his former student looking at him. It only took him one glance to understand the look in his grey eyes.

“Yes, Kyouya?” His voice was brimming with innocence and his smile, for once, was unlike anything Hibari had ever seen before.

He bared his fangs, a threat, a sneer, and a challenge at once. “You’re a lying son of a bitch, Cavallone.”

“Wrong, both,” Dino said, his voice pleasant, almost sweet, in contrast of the fumbling fool who had tripped on his way in half an hour ago. “My mother was the most beautiful woman in Italy, so beautiful in fact, that her hand in marriage was sought after by foreign royalties and nobles. And I’m not lying.” He paused, allowing Hibari to notice the piece of rounded metal slipping between his long fingers. “It’s a habit.”

“To lie.”

“Not lie, I already told you.” Dino sighed, but it suddenly sounded false – and maybe it was, all things considered. His face, eyes were caught in the glaze of sunlight, as if braving accusations. “But when you’ve tripped so many times, your body starts getting used to it.”

Hibari’s hands itched on the handles of his tonfa. He didn’t care about honesty, but then Dino added, “And it’s a good cover.”

He remained unimpressed and Cavallone laughed, pretending that the sound could melt pretences and smooth all lies. He didn’t even blink when a black marker hit him square between the eyes – although Hibari wished he had thrown a stapler instead.

“Like I said, a good cover.” Dino gave him a crooked smile, rubbing the abused spot.

–

8.  
His present this year was a wristwatch of some obscure, foreign design, possibly worth a house or two if he knew Cavallone at all. The only reason why it wasn’t gathering dust like many other useless trinkets his person had been forcefully inconvenienced with was a mechanism built into the watch and its matching pair, a much smaller, less elaborate one which had taken permanent residence around Hibird’s left foot.

 _You’re always with him,_ Dino had reasoned that night, feigning an envious sigh. In return, Hibari had given him a look of utter displeasure which prompted the mafia boss to sing praises over his present, despite the late hour.

A built-in map and radar, he had explained proudly, not to mention a camera. Hibird might look suspiciously unnatural up close, the kind of species that automatically made one think of a group of four-eyed scientists with maniacal laughs and an experiment gone horribly wrong, but he could still be useful for other purposes, like spying and reconnoitring. And the watch would also allow Hibird to know where he was, despite whatever distance, lands or seas which might separate them, deserts or mountains, rivers or glaciers. Hibird’s mighty wings would bring them together again.

By then, Hibari had left him for the more alluring call of sleep.

He couldn’t stand the memory.

The watch had its uses, he had condescended to admit after the first two weeks. What he didn’t appreciate was the other effect, how it dredged up things months, years old, buried and so completely dead they shouldn’t see the light of day anymore. He didn’t waste time trying to figure it out, but hours and perhaps days would pass and an unguarded moment would slink in, and he would be thinking of a lipless mouth and punctured eyes on a face he would try not to recognise, and a parched, rasping voice trying to call him _Kyouya._

The thought actually made him feel slightly sick. Hibird chattered, the tune slightly off-key, and Hibari smothered an urge to flatten the forest landscape around him into a barren wasteland.

“Kyou-san,” Kusakabe was speaking from somewhere behind him, using a tone which was becoming more and more familiar as the long months dragged on. “It’s Sawada Tsunayoshi.”

He turned around after an inert pause, and took the cell phone offered to him. “Hibari-san,” a calm, strangely low-pitched voice said, and for a moment he didn’t recognise it, despite all familiarities. He placed Vongola Tenth first, and then Sawada Tsunayoshi. “I know you are busy and this is much too sudden, but we need your help.”

Hibari frowned, breathed in. “Speak.”

 _“It’s the damned coat,”_ he could hear Gokudera in the background, snappy and loud, rising above Sasagawa Ryouhei’s equally boisterous voice. _“All his men wore black. Why couldn’t he just blend in?”_

–

9.  
“So there was this woman.”

Hibari resisted an impulse to throw the phone outside his window and watch it drown in the fountain at the back of the hotel. “Get to the point,” he said, voice threateningly low.

“I was getting to it.” Yamamoto’s voice was patient, its laid-back nuance preserved with single-minded tenacity which he alone knew how to generate. Sawada had sent him to North Italy to pursue rumours about the Cavallone Family which had arisen from the region, as well as deal with a neutral business associate while Hibari roamed Eastern Europe.

“So there was this woman,” he began again, “who claimed that she used to date one of the Bucking Horse’s men. She said there was an incident six months ago, and the town took quite a beating from the quarrel between two mafia gangs, as quoted.”

“Did she say who?”

“One of them was the Cavallone.” Yamamoto paused. “That she knew for sure. The other, however... well, she guessed it was the Dormiglione Family.”

“She guessed,” Hibari repeated flatly.

“That’s the best I can get so far,” Yamato replied, imperturbable. “The townspeople seem reluctant to talk about it, but I’ll ask around again and see if there’s any more reliable source who’s willing to talk.”

Hibari didn’t respond. It was sort of ridiculous, as far as coincidences went, that the same family he had been chasing across the continent in order to shed some light on the mystery of boxes and rings was the same one who had tampered with the Cavallone. Sawada was anxious. _We are allies after all,_ he had said, perhaps tried to reason with him, and for once Hibari had not made any scathing comment about allies and the flocking tendencies of herbivores.

“You’re after Dormiglione, aren’t you?” Yamamoto asked, curiosity painting a different, tentative colour to his voice. “For your investigation.”

“One of many.”

“Then this may help. I found out – quite by accident, actually – where their third hideout is.” Another pause. “Do you want to do it or leave it to me?”

Hibari didn’t waste a moment’s breath before answering, “I’ll handle it.”

“Thought so.” The laughter was clear in Yamamoto’s voice.

–

10.  
The third hideout provided more challenge compared to the first two, but not by a wide margin. It was a mansion, tucked in the shadowy mountainside of Balkan and doing one hell of a job to remain unnoticed for an edifice so pretentious. He swept through the first floor with relative ease, and then the second. One managed to pique his interest, almost, but not for long – he was down in matter of minutes, along with his cowering subordinates.

Rains of gunfire greeted him when he reached the uppermost level. Hibari waited until the commotion died down, considering between a barrier and a direct shot. He went with the first choice the moment it ceased, slipping into the sort of grace his younger self had completely overlooked in favour of lightning-flash speed and raw strength. Bullets strayed indiscriminately toward all directions, rendered useless once they were repelled by his Dying Flame barrier. He made his way through the throng calmly, systematically, toward the door at the end of the corridor.

A mafia don should be able to defend himself, or at least hire a guardian who can do the job for him. This did not appear to be the case with the head of the Dormiglione Family. Hibari was almost disappointed when he cornered the man, fit out in a white suit which did nothing to conceal his unsightly, swollen belly. An emblem of the famiglia, carved out of black stone, was exhibited above his throne-like seat. He glanced at this testament of vanity, and then fixed his gaze at the man under his mercy.

To his credit, the mafia boss managed to look less terrified that he actually was. The wan smile he put on display would have been convincing, if not for the white that coloured his knuckles on bronzed skin.

“Hibari Kyouya,” he spoke in a rough, cutting voice, seemingly unaware of the reaction his stilted pronunciation had stirred in the Cloud Guardian, and then segued to polished Italian, “I assume you have come for information?”

Hibari had learned only enough to understand bits of it, more used to let his tonfa speak their universal language. “Cavallone,” he deadpanned, “and the boxes.”

There was a moment of stupefied inaction from the man. And then, as if he had suddenly received a surge of courage, he managed to assemble a triumphant sneer. “You are too late, I’m afraid,” he said, sickeningly polite in his victory. “And Bucking Horse too.”

“Then you don’t have any reason to live,” Hibari said, viciously detached as he delivered the final blow. His tonfa collided with the smug face in a crude symphony of skull breaking and flesh crumbling, broken by a strangled, agonized moan.

And then, silence. He stood in front of the makeshift throne with the dead man still seated on it, breathing with the beat of silence as the scent of blood swirled around him. A hard kick sent the chair tumbling across carpeted floor, spilling its content with a heavy thud. The black emblem stared down coldly at him, and the sharp pain in his chest was like needles, ruthless, unforgiving, and so utterly unfamiliar that he did not rebel against it.

And Bucking Horse too.

He snarled, watching his tonfa burn a blazing trail in the stone emblem. _And Bucking Horse too._

“Fuck you,” he hissed. “Fuck you, Cavallone.”

–

11.  
“Kyou-san.”

He had moved to strike before Kusakabe’s voice registered, but the source of disturbance was standing a few paces away from the sofa, out of his direct attack range. Hibari’s first thought when consciousness slowly gripped his mind was not of the immediate situation, but a jaded reflection of when ‘Hibari’ had become ‘Kyou-san’ and Tetsu a shadow that trailed his every step, first in a school uniform and now in stiff, expensive suits and silk black ties that discoloured traces of blood. His vision cleared up after a few rapid blinks and for the first time he noticed the smell of coffee.

Kusakabe did not make an observation over how he had let another person approach him in a state as vulnerable as sleep. “There is a message from Sawada Tsunayoshi,” he said instead and set the steaming mug down on the table. Hibari glanced at his watch – almost eight, he had been asleep for more than three hours.

“They had lost contact with Yamamoto four days ago,” Kusakabe continued after he had dutifully picked up the mug. “Coincidentally, Miss Chrome was in Rome this week, so Sawada asked her to look into it, find out what’s wrong. Looks like a deal gone sour.”

“The Redentore.”

Kusakabe nodded. “The Redentore Family. Gokudera said that it was nothing Yamamoto couldn’t handle, but Sawada was worried.”

“Of course,” Hibari murmured, his tone depreciating if there was any at all. When he looked up, his face wore a shadow of a smile, the same one he had used in interrogation rooms under lamps too bright and agonized screams. “She wasn’t there coincidentally.”

There was a long pause before the other man answered, reluctantly, “Maybe not.”

Hibari didn’t reply. One of Cavallone’s bases was in Rome – it was easy to guess what Sawada was thinking. He looked down at thick, dark liquid swirling in his mug, suddenly more tired than he had been before sleep had slinked up and caught him off guard. He was tired of hunting boxes and seeking explanations. He was tired of the foundation, the transactions, even the thrill of crossing into battle zones and peril’s treacherous arms when he dealt with the uglier side of money. He was tired of glancing at every glint of gold which skirted his line of vision, tired of hearing the whisper of his name, _Kyouya, Kyouya, Kyouya,_ so tenderly like it had never passed his lips before.

“He mentioned something else,” Kusakabe spoke again, his voice firm and even, the dull, invariable warmth of a rock laid too long under the sun, “about the Dormiglione Family.”

Hibari looked at him. The smirk that suddenly curved his lips was nothing short of real, brutal, intense. “Dormiglione is no more.”

“No more,” the other man did not argue, but his eyes remained heavy on him. “Sawada said something interesting though. Dormiglione was a small famiglia with little power, but apparently it was affiliated with the yakuza family, Kanbayashi.”

“Really,” he hummed, his interest not piqued. Kanbayashi was no small fry, but not the biggest shark in the sea either. Hibari couldn’t imagine why Kusakabe thought he would be interested.

Except, of course, the boxes.

“There are other leads,” Kusakabe said, so very carefully that it sounded almost ridiculous, “but perhaps we should pursue this and return to Japan for a while.”

“It can wait,” Hibari said dismissively, if a little too quickly. “For now, we’ll focus on Europe. How far along is the Germany base?”

Once again, Kusakabe did not raise any argument. “About three months. The weather makes it difficult to maintain cover, and with Urabe injured, we lack one able Mist illusionist. The shift has to be rearranged.”

“Just proceed as quickly as possible,” he muttered, fending off any incoming of a headache. “I’ll check the progress on the location next week. Now where’s that transfer fund document?”

“Ah.” There was a strained pause. Hesitation crept in and Hibari raised his eyes, impatient. “Kyou-san, if you don’t mind, let me handle the transfer this once. It isn’t a difficult transaction and there are other things that require your attention more.”

Eyes narrowed, he took a moment to analyse the request. The only explanation he could come up with was that for some reason, Kusakabe wanted to play mother-hen. Hibari discovered that he couldn’t care less and settled with a terse ‘fine’.

The relief on the other man’s face almost smoothed all strains and hard angles built into callous skin. “Then I’ll bring the Bulgaria location scout report,” Kusakabe nodded and excused himself. As he opened the door to leave, Hibird fluttered in.

Hibari allowed him to perch on the back of two fingers, feeling the light, sinking pressure of each step. From Hibird’s left foot, the silver band gleamed at him.

–

12.  
Winter departed noiselessly, leaving the faint smell of snow lingering in the air. Spring was supposed to bring life, caress the green earth to thrive, but when he returned to Namimori, sakura was in full bloom and he only felt faintly irritated.

Sasagawa Ryouhei, still trying to rope him in to help with the newest batch of recruits, was a constant nuisance. One of these young and talented souls, he announced loudly, perhaps in some preposterous, misguided hope of stirring his interest, picked tonfa as his weapon of choice and wouldn’t it only be fair that he received instructions from the illustrious master?

Hibari ignored him. He never mentioned that he had met the young man in question once, just the day before. He never mentioned either that the ‘young and talented soul’ was an herbivore that scurried away at the sight of him, or that two of the remaining nineteen lagging behind him had a whip attached to their belt.

He never mentioned many things.

Every year, Sawada approached him with a request to join a gathering, a _hanami_ with the entire family, thinking that it was his duty to keep everyone together. Hibari declined and Sawada retreated without much fuss, his taut smile a ghost of its former glory. There was still no news from Yamamoto, and now that Chrome appeared to be missing as well, the atmosphere in the Headquarters was solemn at best.

Later, when night fell like a curtain on wet, slipping earth, raindrops battered pink petals off swaying branches and the Tenth Vongola made a visit to his quarters. Kusakabe let him in and left a cup of tea at his side, brewed into green perfection.

“Hibari-san,” he began, seating himself into an awkward _seiza_ , “I need your help.”

Hibari did not acknowledge the request, or the unspoken ‘again’ at the end of the sentence. Undaunted, Sawada tried again, “There is no one else I can ask. Only you.”

The appeal didn’t invite pity and Hibari had none to give. When the younger man spoke, he spoke plainly, no lavishing or squandering of facts, just honesty – perhaps because he was desperate enough.

“Yamamoto,” he continued, almost begged, “and Chrome.”

“You haven’t told me what they were doing,” Hibari interrupted. The display of weakness sickened him, and Sawada’s white suit reminded him of things, some long-buried trivialities he couldn’t quite place. They probably were not important.

“We had no dealing with Redentore,” the admission came more smoothly than he had expected. Sawada looked at him, his gaze straight, honest, but it made him narrow his eyes, wondering if he wasn’t looking at a mask instead, a facade pieced by Vongola’s name and one too many burden. “But there were rumours,” the Decimo was still speaking, his tone unchanging, “that they killed Dino-san. I didn’t believe it, there were too many rumours back then, but I asked Yamamoto to look into it.”

They let the silence fester for a while, listening as it bowed down to the meandrous aria of the wind. The sound seemed to carry them elsewhere, away from this room with its flickering lamp and orderly tatami. Sawada’s gaze remained fixed on him, once again flooded with plea.

“I would have gone myself,” he murmured, scarcely above the rain, “but I cannot send Ryouhei-san.”

Hibari wanted to sneer, tell him that his herbivorous tendencies were going to kill him one day. The world was pressing down on him, being the Tenth Vongola, the construction of the new underground stronghold, the blood that spilled and soaked the earth, all done in his name, and he carried it with an attachment to a girl and a so-called bond with many weak underlings that burdened his every step along the way.

But he was the sky and the sky did not exist without its complements, guardians, only a blank expanse of colourless nothing. The sky, when it came to it, was the weakest of all, the most dependent. Without the rest, without his allies, Sawada was nothing. Vongola was nothing.

Hibari kept his silence, not out of sympathy. He never mentioned either, the weeks he had gone missing, the short note he had left to Kusakabe, and the occasional phone calls from many countries, filled with static hum and the sound of his breathing, and the other man’s welcoming silence. He never mentioned the bases and hideouts, either empty or ruined or filled with the stench of blood and corpses rotting away, littered across the continent from east to west. He never mentioned that he had looked at each and every one of them and never found a man with golden hair and a smile that never failed to irritate him.

Too many things he never mentioned.

“I will find him,” he said, declared. “He’s dead and I will find him dead and I will bring you the proof that he’s dead.” He looked at the Decimo, a thin challenge, offer, take it or leave it. “That should be enough.”

Sawada stared at him, large eyes – he always had a pair of too large, too stupid eyes – appraising him, a flicker of too many emotions behind their shutters. His expression was that of a man accepting his death penalty when he bowed slightly, both palms flat on the tatami floor.

“Thank you.”

The wind rattled the windows as they sat in silence, the deal sealed. The storm raged on and Hibari thought about Cavallone’s death and the relief it would bring. Small or immense did not matter. No more waiting, no more hesitating in the dark and wondering if they had done everything they could. Loss was painless, compared to the slow grief of lingering in a limbo, haunted by thousands possibilities and knowing that they would always exist until one took pity on them and revealed itself as the truth.

The watch peeked from under his sleeve, a glint of silver and gold that tarnished the black of his kimono.

He had never wanted to see someone dead so much.

–

_“Maybe next year, I can move up a few inches,” Dino said, tracing his ring finger gently, mere tantalising touches. Already halfway to sleep, Hibari pulled his hand away and glared at the other man._

_“Shut up before I throw you out,” he hissed._

_Dino smiled, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. “Always so demanding,” he murmured, teasing, but conceded to the silence. A heartbeat, two, and Hibari closed his eyes again, tolerating the fingers that curled around his wrist. A hush fell over them._

_The night bled away._

_**End Part 1** _

–


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously, when I said two weeks, I meant two months. Uh, yeah, I’ll shut up now. Enjoy the monster, folks.

  
13.  
 _Il Ritratto_ was not a trattoria, despite all outward appearances. It took up a relatively small space in a cul-de-sac, cornered by many other establishments of similar purpose and losing the race, as far as innocent eyes could tell. The patrons were not estranged fathers seeking forgiveness from angry sons for missing an important football game, or mothers and daughters pursuing an awkward concession after a disastrous break-up of marriage. Above the entrance, the small plank heralding its name was not meant to invite, but to dissuade visitors from taking interest with a display of slipshod letters and rusty iron nails burrowing into the wood.  
  
It served steak and pasta and second-class wine. The food was passable, good enough to pass one’s throat, bland enough to keep a small frown through the entire bites and forkfuls. The door was open to all and a bartender always greeted new customers with a vague, unsettling smile which indicated that he knew better about something, but those who came to eat never visited the place twice. It carved no memory in their mind, only a small, mediocre restaurant they accidentally stumbled upon in search for a meal. Not good, not bad, neither special nor memorable.  
  
When Hibari walked into the establishment, dark eyes sweeping across dimly lit interior, there were seven other patrons seated behind three different tables. The murmur of conversation quickly softened into a low, curious hum as all eyes glanced at his direction. His footfalls, and the sharp tinkling of glasses exchanging from one large calloused hand to another played the only tunes in the newfound hush.  
  
The bartender, a forty-six-year-old man with gaunt cheeks and receding hairline, smiled his habitual, ambiguous smile. Hibari returned it with an expressionless look, slightly tinged with irritation at the wisps of grey smoke lazily curling up to the ceiling, and slipped into a seat in front of him.   
  
“Any order?” the man asked casually. A Japanese visitor in this part of the town was unusual, although not as rare as it once had been. The last, he still remembered, had been more than four weeks ago, a tall man with a scar on his chin and an easy smile which had provoked deep unease instead of the customary assurance.  
  
The bartender had recognised that man from four weeks ago, as certainly as he knew who _this_ man was. One of his seven patrons, a man with slanted eyes hidden under a brown, shabby fedora and a turned-down mouth tight in unspoken alarm, shared this particular knowledge and by now had abandoned his cigar for the steady comfort of a small, automatic pistol nestled within an inner pocket. Two other had their own guesses, enveloped by thin swath of fear, while the remaining four demonstrated their obliviousness by throwing the foreigner depreciating if curious looks.  
  
“I’m looking for a Japanese man,” Hibari said in heavily-accented Italian, fingers interlaced on the wooden counter, “and a Japanese woman.”  
  
The bartender rewarded him with a subdued smile. “We do not have them on the menu, _signore_.”   
  
Hibari narrowed his eyes, the twin fangs ready under his arms when the man abruptly turned around and busied himself with bottles and glasses. “But allow me to recommend this.” He returned with a filled glass, which he promptly pushed across the counter. Under the gleaming liquid amber was a sealed envelope posing as an innocuous paper napkin. The kanji _ame_ was scribbled on the top-left corner, in fading black ink.  
  
Hibari regarded the small but conspicuous character with faint disapproval. Yamamoto couldn’t have left a clearer trace – that was what probably had gotten him in trouble in the first place. He took the envelope, replaced it with a few bills of large sum on the counter, and turned around to leave. Seven pairs of eyes followed his exit with various degree of apprehension until the door swung close behind him.  
  
The bartender cleared out the counter and dumped the untouched glass in the sink. His smile, for once, was fringed with relief.   
  
Well, all in a good day’s business.  
  
  
–  
  
  
14.  
There was something about silence that drew him in. It had begun with a few empty afternoons at the rooftop of Nami High, too much time laid bare and unused in his hands. Sounds had been scarce and muted there, on the crest of Namimori’s ground, and it lent a different sort of atmosphere to the place, a few scales above the vigour and liveliness of the school ground. He had stood overlooking his entire city, pale grey buildings flecked by dull red of rooftops and the green dots of trees weaving in between. The magic lay in the little flutters of the wind and the bright glow that fell on Hibird’s golden wings, in the thin streams of sunlight breaking between clouds that lingered after a spell of a drizzle.  
  
Hibari remembered all those as he sat on the window sill in his small hotel room, wrapped in this sacred shroud of silence, the kind that only night could fabricate. He remembered the sense of peace – because Namimori in peace was beautiful and she deserved nothing less – and felt a familiar wave of irritation that he should be away from all those.  
  
He tried, however, not to remember one too many interruptions, the moment of calm trampled as the door burst open to admit a constant source of disturbance. He tried not to remember too many details of too many trysts and bold kisses stolen under the threat of a painful death.   
  
It had been years ago. He should have forgotten.  
  
The recollection pulled his face into a frown and Hibari shifted his gaze from the window to his right-hand man. Kusakabe, seated behind the only desk in the small hotel room, had his whole attention poured on Yamamoto’s short letter. He worked quietly, having learnt and understood the use of silence well in front of Hibari’s scowls and threats – and he had been working _long_ enough.  
  
“There must be at least ten layers of cipher in that,” he said, his dry voice cutting into the silence.  
  
Kusakabe lifted his face, his strong, chiselled features illuminated by the dim yellow light from the desk lamp. He didn’t look offended – instead there was a hint of amusement he couldn’t quite cover. “Twelve, so far, Boss. Yamamoto Takeshi was being exceedingly careful.”  
  
Hibari snorted. “Morbidly, perhaps.”   
  
“Maybe he felt it was necessary,” Kusakabe reasoned, casual but tentative. Hibari frowned, looking down at his hands, coiled loosely on his lap, and the purple stone that stood stark against the pale of his ring finger.  
  
“That bartender in _Il Ritratto_ ,” he murmured to no one in particular, “he knew who I was.”  
  
“It wasn’t unexpected, wasn’t it?” Kusakabe sounded, if anything, slightly bewildered. “After all, Sawada Tsunayoshi will rule Vongola one day.”  
  
“There was a chance that he recognised Yamamoto too,” Hibari said impatiently. His temper was always ready to be provoked when his second couldn’t keep up with his line of thinking, and Kusakabe, having suffered the brunt of this particular displeasure more than he really cared to, was quick on the uptake.  
  
“Do you want to go back there and ask him again?”  
  
“We’ll see what _it_ has to say first.”  
  
Kusakabe picked up the hint and returned to the letter at hand. In hindsight, Hibari reflected, there was no proof if the message had indeed been written by Yamamoto and not, in fact, a scheme intended to mislead him. Everyone of consequence in the mafia world knew about the six guardians of Sawada Tsunayoshi, and Yamamoto went everywhere with his katana strapped on his back – a dead giveaway if there was one.   
  
For a moment, he entertained the thought that the worst had happened and both Yamamoto and Chrome had been, somehow, disposed of. The fact that he couldn’t quite imagine it happening troubled him more than the thought itself. Hibari wasn’t sure since when his opinion of them, and the rest of Sawada’s gang for that matter, had shifted from utter distaste to grudging acceptance. It didn’t seem to be that long time ago since he had tossed Gokudera and Yamamoto out of the window of the council room.  
  
“I don’t understand,” Kusakabe suddenly spoke, his usually solemn voice betraying confusion. His eyes caught Hibari’s, left hand holding the letter and the other his palmtop. “It says only one word, Kyou-san. _Sotsugyou._ Graduation. What does that mean?”  
  
A riddle even under all those ciphers. He couldn’t decide if Yamamoto was smart or stupid, but luck had favoured him this once. The puzzle played one other role than that of a final safety measure. It dispelled any possible suspicion of traps because only Sawada and his guardians – and Dino Cavallone – knew how to interpret the word.   
  
“It means he was alive.”  
  
“Yamamoto?” Kusakabe sounded cautious more than surprised.  
  
“Yamamoto,” he acknowledged, his voice neutral. “And I know where to look for him.”  
  
The pale round moon seemed to be frowning down at him, but there was nothing to add. Hibari distanced himself the window, away from its contempt.   
  
“We leave tomorrow morning.”  
  
It was best to leave the uncertain in the dark.  
  
  
–  
  
  
15.  
“What are you doing up here?”   
  
Hibari felt the corner of his eyes twitch. He should be the one who asked the question, seeing that Cavallone was trespassing _his_ domain, but of course Dino had long since ignored the existence of such boundaries, that bastard of an herbivore. He came and went as he pleased, always ready with a pretext whenever confronted, and now he was squatting next to him with two paces to spare in case Hibari decided to get violent.  
  
“It’s your graduation ceremony, Kyouya.” His tone was serious but not accusing. “I thought you loved your school. Don’t you want to say goodbye?”  
  
“Get lost.”  
  
Dino grinned, deliberately walking into the half-hearted trap. “Not to me, I’m obviously not the receiver of your unconditional love and devotion.” He paused, tilting his head, and Hibari who had cracked open an eye frowned at the way his hair cheerfully glinted off sunlight. He hated that colour – it did not fit in here, on the rooftop of his school, on all the green trails of Namimori.   
  
“Well, you don’t want to attend your ceremony and I’m already here.” Dino tapped a finger on his chin, the other hand on his thigh, never straying far from the handle of his whip. “You fancy a spar?”  
  
Hibari deigned him a sneer. “If you fancy getting your ass kicked.”  
  
“I wonder,” he smiled again and then segued into another topic without so much as a warning or anything that remotely resembled a conjunction. “I’m going back to Rome in three days. Come with me, Kyouya.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“It’s going to be great,” Dino continued blithely, all soaring hopes and bright prospect, as if he hadn’t noticed the acerbic reply. “New experiences, Kyouya. You can’t bury yourself forever in Namimori.”  
  
“None of your business.”  
  
“We’ll meet interesting people.” The encouragement persisted without end on sight. Hibari’s hands moved to grip his tonfa, and Dino was toying with the leather of his own weapon. “Strong people. Dangerous people. We’ll meet many of them, and you can help me kicking their ass.”  
  
His morning was ruined, Hibari decided sullenly. He could hear the students singing Namimori anthem in the school gym, deep, powerful, _discordant_ , nothing like Hibird’s clear-cut twittering, and slowly rose to his feet. “You ask for it, Cavallone, so now I’ll bite you to death.”  
  
“I would already be dead by now if you really meant it.” Dino’s smile was warm, innocent, but the taunt went home and Hibari launched his opening attack, narrowly missing a grinning face.   
  
“Still irascible,” Dino sighed, but his posture was wary and his whip was stretched between two hands. “We need to work on that temper of yours, Kyouya. So there, the prime reason why you must come with me.”  
  
Hibari smirked then, and Dino paled a little – no doubt, he knew what it meant. They jumped apart and what soon ensued was the bloodiest, ugliest, most gruesome battle – it was nowhere near the level of a _spar_ anymore – to ever grace the record of their fighting history.  
  
By the end of the day, Hibari made sure that he had left enough memory of pain on Cavallone’s body to last a lifetime. The fact that he was sporting no less cuts and bruises that hurt like _hell_ was easily ignored – although it mostly had to do with the fact that he had passed out before reaching the stairs.  
  
At least it was a memorable goodbye to his school. Somewhat.  
  
  
–  
  
  
16.  
“No.”  
  
“Tetsu.”  
  
“No, Kyou-san.” Kusakabe was vehement in his refusal, a little hint of panic buried deep in the boom of his voice. “You cannot ask me to leave you alone.”  
  
Hibari looked at him, a contemptuous smile ghosting over his lips, and said dryly, “I wasn’t asking.”  
  
Sawada had contacted him nine times in total, sounding increasingly calmer with each phone call, deadlier as he politely asked for any information, a few words at least, not even a proper report, because he really couldn’t, _wouldn’t_ allow another of his guardians to disappear. Hibari had received the first three and ignored the subsequent four before finally picking up the eight only to order the Vongola Tenth to shut up and leave him the fuck alone.  
  
It had been obeyed – for five short hours, and then Sawada had called him again and demanded for a hint, _a will if you please_ , in case, _in case_ the worst happened and what then? Irritated, Hibari had turned off his cell phone but eventually decided to send Kusakabe back. A secure line was only so much secure and he wouldn’t risk the information, disguised as it was in a riddle.   
  
Kusakabe, on the other hand, would die first before one word of it could slip past his lips.  
  
“What do you want me to do?” he asked after a prolonged pause, defeated.  
  
Hibari turned toward the window, hills rising beyond the glass, overrun by dark-green leaves on lofty trees. They had gone from dilapidated hotels, to country inns, to a night under the stars on spread-out blankets, far too many times that he couldn’t even remember how many days had passed. “Tell Sawada about Yamamoto’s message,” he said, “and to stop bothering me.”  
  
“This ‘graduation’,” Kusakabe sounded like he had suddenly caught a terrible cold. “He’ll know what it means?”  
  
“If he uses his head.”  
  
The other man said nothing further until he left. Hibari took a deep breath, adjusting himself to the slight, crippled feeling that surfaced in Kusakabe’s empty place, and was vaguely annoyed to find that it was reminding him to Cavallone. His fingers clamped down on the windowsill, like an anchor.  
  
When he set out for the place which name was buried deep in ciphers and riddles and trenches of memories, the sun had gone hiding behind grey strips of clouds.  
  
  
–  
  
  
17.  
The last time he had fallen into a trap was years ago, when Dino, teaming up with Reborn, had managed to extract a promise from him to go to Italy through underhanded means.  
  
Hibari hadn’t forgotten that particular offense. The fact that Sawada and his happy little family had tagged along added a fistful of salt to the wound. In a violent fit of retaliation, he had spent the entire flight and the first two days in Rome burning a living hell for Dino and everyone else in his immediate vicinity.  
  
(And Cavallone, pretending to be more stupid than he had ever been, had always returned for more punishment and severe beatings until Hibari tolerated his presence in the same room for more than two seconds without trying to erase it completely.)  
  
Suffice to say, he never liked traps – they were like spiders, skirting around the edges, weaving, waiting, slinking carefully to spring at an unguarded moment, they smelled of degraded cunning and reminded him too much of Mukuro. Most of the times, he would notice them quick enough to avoid running headlong into any, but the very few times he didn’t, there was usually a big price to follow.  
  
The air was damp and cold with mist. He pressed his back against a tree, eyes sweeping over dense formations of trees and patches of murky grey loosely weaved in between. In an hour, the sun would set and the mist would engulf him and his pursuers. He could still hear them, words murmured and unravelled by distance, footsteps approaching and then receding just as quickly. They were hunting him down – this much he had gathered since his encounter with the first group, and a passing glance had told him everything he needed to know.  
  
Dormiglione. And Redentore. Working together.  
  
He didn’t want to think about Dino, but the memories pursued him with vengeance in each of its steps. Under his shoes, wet soil was littered with dead leaves, some dry and crisp, others damp and heavy as they bowed to condensed mist and lingering dews. The sounds had almost completely disappeared now, leaving the trees wrapped in an eerie glow of combined dusk and silence. He stared at the mist, thinking of death, cold air in his lungs.  
  
And then he saw it, a striking blue that slashed the air, quick and abrupt, like a bolt of lightning that didn’t end on the horizon. His feet had moved, running after it before his mind issued the order. The forest parted before him, gaps widening into a tangled web of paths, but the blue glow was faster. It disappeared behind trees, leaving a faint smoky trail that melted into the mist just as quickly.  
  
By then, his ears had picked up the commotion, just a few paces ahead. He approached the small clearing, tonfa in hand, and breathed out at the sight of one man surrounded by almost twenty others.  
  
Two fired, the shots robbed the forest of what little silence remaining in its bowels, but Yamamoto looked up at him and grinned.  
  
  
–  
  
  
18\.   
“This isn’t the place.”  
  
“No,” came the submissive reply. It was almost dark inside the hut, but Yamamoto moved around deftly, checking every corner of the room. And then he sat down on the cold stone floor, cross-legged, katana on his lap as he began to clean the blade with a thick piece of black fabric. “Just an abandoned house I’m temporarily using. Better than sleeping outside in all that mist and rain. Sit down, please.” He looked at Hibari, an easy grin sliding into place. “A good thing you found me today. I’m going back to the hideout tomorrow morning.”  
  
Hibari didn’t take up the offer. “You didn’t contact Sawada,” he said instead, not moving away from the closed door.  
  
Guilt leapt into Yamamoto’s eyes and his grin faltered slightly. “I didn’t,” he admitted. Honesty came to him like a second nature, well-practised, honourable, cultured.  
  
“He was like a madman losing his limbs one by one.”  
  
Yamamoto returned to his ritual, the movement of his hand slow and precise. “I suspect as much, but I can’t make any contact.” His eyes avoided Hibari’s, taking refuge in the recovered glint of his blade. “Communication devices don’t work in here. They put a barrier field around the area and it interferes with radio waves. Not to mention the constant rain and mist.”  
  
Hibari snorted. “It’s your doing.”  
  
Yamamoto’s smile returned, a modest effort. “And Chrome’s, but the weather definitely helps.”  
  
They lapsed into silence, familiar and somehow not. Neither of them disliked silence, but the untouched subject hung like a third presence in the small house, sprinkling enough pressure to make it excruciating. He breathed in, and then out, finding the necessary distraction in regulating his breathing. Yamamoto would have to yield eventually. There were only so many ways a sword could glint and shine.  
  
“I met him.”  
  
Hibari glanced up sharply. Yamamoto was looking at him, his gaze cool and unwary, perhaps only slightly curious. “Three weeks ago, before we parted ways,” he added. “He was injured, but nothing too serious as far as I could see.”  
  
“You’re helping him.”  
  
“Order from the boss,” Yamamoto answered with a shrug, his hand resting on the hilt of his katana. “It’s the right thing to do anyway. Cavallone is an allied Family.”  
  
 _Who don’t know how to take care of themselves,_ Hibari wanted to add nastily. He would have, if not for the lump swelling in his throat, as his fingers clawed into the wood of the door.  
  
  
–  
  
  
19.  
What Yamamoto was doing, Hibari concluded the next morning, was playing mailman.  
  
“It’s called setting up communication,” Yamamoto corrected him with a laugh that oddly didn’t sound out of place in the daybreak’s gloom. He let Hibari hold the umbrella while he tinkered with his box and made use of his Rain swallows.  
  
“They allow us to keep in touch with two other emergency hideouts in the area,” he explained. “But they can’t go too far out of range alone, so I have to come here at least twice a week to deliver and retrieve messages.”   
  
A swallow flew past swiftly, lightly touching the tip of Yamamoto’s fingers before it disappeared into the box, leaving only a thin strip of white cloth between his index and middle finger and a scent stronger than the rain. “White means the message is received. Good.” He slipped it into the pocket of his shirt and smiled at his companion. “Come to think of it, your bird will be able to do a better job. Where is he?”  
  
Hibari informed him loftily that Hibird was above such herbivorous purposes and earned himself another laugh. “Well, there isn’t much time left anyway. We’re planning to strike back in a few days, or at least get Dino-san out of here before things get worse. This sort of guerrilla war can only hold them off for so long. Besides, it’s easier to retaliate from the outside, and I imagine Tsuna also has a word or two to say to Redentore.”  
  
“He knew about this.”  
  
“Maybe,” Yamamoto’s tone was laidback, noncommittal, and Hibari wondered just how much Sawada was actually keeping from him. “He didn’t say anything for sure, just speculations.”  
  
The last of the Rain swallows made its flight safely home and Yamamoto snapped the box shut. “I guess that’s it for today.” He pried the umbrella from Hibari’s white-knuckled grasp, smiling even with the cold air biting into his cheeks. “We have six hours of hiking ahead. I don’t know if you’re up for it but–”  
  
Hibari’s tonfa almost bashed his face.  
  
  
–  
  
  
20.  
The memory was ages old. It probably should have been lost, ground into silvery dust along with days spent in woods and mountains and beaches, trying to beat the crap out of his self-proclaimed tutor. But he still saw the smile behind his eyelids, sharp and clear in focused precision as if untouched by the clock’s forlorn ticks, seconds passing away to eternity.  
  
Dino had many smiles. This particular one was reserved only for his ‘little brother’ and he wore it proudly, a badge on the curve of his lips. The corner of Hibari’s left eye twitched when the noisy group clustering at the riverbanks started to bicker over how to build a fire to grill the fish Sasagawa had caught. He turned around, stalking past black-suited shadows blending into the gloom of the forest before his patience could disappear entirely.   
  
“Wait, Kyouya, wait.” Dino was suddenly at his side, hand firm on his shoulder. “I want to show you something.”  
  
He was dragged by one arm, following an animal trail deep into the forest. Romario was tailing them from a respectable distance, always careful, always silent, always _there._ It was an art, what the man was doing, balanced and perfected over the years. It struck Hibari as an odd sort of strength, being strong for the sake of dependency – so he could depend on Dino to lead the entire family, so Dino could depend on him.  
  
“It isn’t far. We’re almost there.”  
  
Dino was now holding his hand. Annoyed, Hibari shook it off, earning himself a bright grin in return of his glare.   
  
“I don’t want you to get lost,” Dino explained innocently.  
  
“Walk, or I’ll leave.”  
  
“So impatient.” Dino clicked his tongue but the warning was dutifully noted. “It should be somewhere around here, if memory serves me right. Has been months since I last– there it is, the entrance.”  
  
It was a rusty iron gate, leaning sideways into the sloping ground and painted in an unobtrusive shade of green. There were chains – new chains – secured around the handgrips, forbidding entry. Dino fiddled with the lock for a moment and then pulled it open.  
  
“It’s an abandoned military facility,” he explained, proud as if he was the owner of the place. “Remnants of the war. I discovered it by accident around a year ago. Come in, Kyouya.”  
  
Maybe he was now. Hibari ignored the offered hand and stepped in, blinking his eyes in the welcoming darkness. Dino stayed close, guiding with voice and lost distance even with both his hands shoved into his pockets. Hibari didn’t listen to his words, focusing instead on the rising and falling of his timbre as their feet brought them deeper, into long, dark tunnels that assembled a labyrinth underground.  
  
“...we didn’t come often to this area – no one does, actually – so maybe it was fate. And then I asked Romario to hack into the army’s files and see if–”  
  
“What,” Hibari cut him off, “are we doing here.”  
  
“Oh, Kyouya, you’re no fun.” There was a hand ruffling his hair affectionately. Hibari turned around to bite that hand off, only to miss it by a fraction of a second. Dino was standing under a shaft of light from an opening on the roof, laughing with the confidence of a man who could have those little touches from Hibari Kyouya without losing a finger, an eye, or some other body part. “So what do you think? Isn’t it awesome? I’m thinking about turning this place into a secret base.”  
  
“And you brought _me_ here,” Hibari deadpanned, not amused. Cavallone’s logic failed him, as always.  
  
“One of many reasons, yeah.” Dino grinned, scratching the back of his head and looking a few years younger than he was supposed to. “You didn’t look like you’re enjoying yourself.”  
  
A scowl. “I wasn’t.”  
  
The grin fell, and then softened into an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry I didn’t know,” he said, his fingers gently touching Hibari’s hair, brushing the side of his face. “I thought a field trip would be fun, and this part of the forest is always so beauti–”  
  
“Stop touching me.” Hibari slapped the hand away, his muscles tense like a cord after being hammered too long. Dino had the decency to actually look surprised for a moment, his hand hovering in the space between them, rejected, uncertain.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, softer, fingers fisting at his side. He looked calm, defeated.  
  
Hibari shot him a disdainful look. “If you apologise one more time–”  
  
“Then allow me to make amends in some other way?” Dino interrupted, like a sudden burst of firework across the unsuspecting night. He leant in, close enough for Hibari to see the dark gold of his eyes. “What do you want for your birthday next week, Kyouya?”  
  
Tension still sizzled in the air but he was ignoring it, much like how a passerby ignored a dead body in the middle the street – eyes ahead, kept walking, the world hadn’t toppled off of its axis just because someone dropped dead. There was certain pragmatism in his manner that caught Hibari off guard – and the moment’s lapse irritated him.  
  
“I hate you.”  
  
“I know.” Dino smiled, not even batting an eye. The moment passed, but there had never been never any accidental or deliberate touch again, since then.   
  
Hibari Kyouya never noticed these things – except he _did_ , now.  
  
  
–  
  
  
21.  
“Kyouya.”  
  
Romario had the voice of a quiet old man who spent much of his time sitting in front of the fire thinking and smoking a pipe. When he spoke _his_ name, it was without the eagerness or the delicate layers of passion Dino held within, only letters and a word, a line in a book.  
  
“You’re still alive.” Hibari smirked by way of greeting. Romario stood at the base of the stairs, a guardian statue that donned a black suit and came to life.  
  
“This old man won’t die anytime soon,” he said, as easily as shadow eased under his feet when he moved, “as long as the boss still has some use of him.”  
  
Hibari turned away, combing rain out of his hair with fingers stiff from the cold. He was half-expecting to see someone with a face so familiar, so intimate now in the deep of his mind that his hands itched to claw at that face and destroy it so he wouldn’t have to see it, ever, again.  
  
“He’s not here,” Romario said, without accusation or inflection in his quiet timbre, only the knowing glint in his eyes. “He’s at another hideout with Miss Chrome and a few others right now, preparing for the attack.”  
  
“We’re planning to strike back in a few days, so Romario has been stuck here with sentry duty,” Yamamoto explained with a laugh, striding between them, into winding corridors illuminated by pale, washed-out light. Hibari followed with slower pace, the fight not gone from his muscles.   
  
“Your family is ripped to shreds.”   
  
It brought him certain morbid satisfaction to fling the words out of his mouth – _your mouth, Kyouya, why do you use it to hurt people so much?_ – and to see tension suddenly weighing down Romario’s shoulders. Yamamoto’s steps faltered as he glanced back, wary, but saying nothing.  
  
“The circumstances are difficult,” Romario spoke calmly, a diplomatic answer. Hibari, despising the use of such tactics almost as much as cowardice and having no qualms to let his sentiments known, made a disgusted snort, the sound curt, arrogant. It earned him a small, wry smile.  
  
“We had to put Boss to sleep first before making our retreat here.” A crumpled pack of cigarette was dug out from a back pocket. Romario’s fingers were steady, even as he admitted his grave sin of disobedience – not to Cavallone, perhaps never to _Cavallone_ , only to one person. “The outlook wasn’t good,” he continued, lighter appearing in his other hand. “The surprise attack really caught us unprepared, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Well, certain measures must be taken to keep our priorities straight.”  
  
Hibari smiled, depreciating. “How convenient.”  
  
“You don’t understand.” Romario was looking at him, quiet passion spinning to life, not unlike the black fire one would call anger. “We cannot lose him. It’s out of the question.”  
  
“Of course it is,” Yamamoto murmured, steel in his voice. Loyalty was the sword that hung on his back, the blue flame that burst from his ring. “A boss isn’t just a boss.”  
  
“Yes, and it was especially true in this case,” Romario nodded, Yamamoto’s conviction propelling him into words. “The Ninth, the Cavallone Ninth was a good man with a kind heart. But he was also clueless in nature and much too trusting. There was nothing he could do about the family’s condition, which had gone downhill for a few generations. Still, he was our boss, and when he died...”   
  
He paused, a vaguely pained look shadowing the wrinkles that marked the passage of time on his face. His pace slowed and he took a long drag from his cigarette before continuing, “Things changed. It was difficult, unimaginable to put your trust on a seventeen-year-old boy who couldn’t even walk without tripping. But there are people who can work miracles.” Another pause, quieter, more reverent. “The men would die for him.”  
  
Only herbivores, Hibari wanted to say, succumbed to that line of thinking. But the air was thick here, ripe with memories that twisted his stomach and ghosted over his consciousness. He rebelled against them by retorting, “Many did.”  
  
They had stopped in front of a heavy door and Yamamoto punched in a line of codes, revealing a room bathed in darkness and cold, stagnant air. He strode in, seemingly unconcerned, but they remained outside. Romario did not smile or frown, even as the news sank in. “The Cavallone Family will not crumble only because of this,” he said instead, firm like a rock, faith unshaken. “Our strength does not lie solely in number. We’ll come back stronger than ever and our revenge will be swift, severe as it should be.”  
  
“I’m afraid,” Yamamoto’s voice suddenly carried from inside the room, laden with tension, “we have a bit of a problem.”  
  
The lamp had been lit inside, playing many tricks in distorted shapes of wispy white ghosts as mist swirled about the room, filling every corner. Yamamoto’s face was a blur in the thick of it.  
  
“They are in danger.”  
  
  
–  
  
  
22.  
Dusk was creeping in when he finally found the place, the rain long since subdued into a light drizzle, and then brimming silence. The smell of blood was strong in his nose, and amidst bodies that littered the ground, lay a fallen trident, silver sharp tainted with blood. Here, there was no mist to use against or hide within, the illusionist presumably wounded or worse.  
  
Ice set deep in his guts, worse than before, worse than the chill of damp clothes clinging to his skin. There was enough cold in him to deter even fire. Hibari cast a glance around, searching – not for anything in particular, just searching – and found nothing.   
  
He took a deep breath.  
  
The movement caught his eyes, quicker than the sound tearing a path through silence to reach his ears. He dodged the gunshot just in time, rage leaping to life, now roaring inside him as he flickered into blurs and bursting flames. One man, two, three, _four_ , they had all been watching him and he hadn’t noticed. Not a single one.   
  
Anger thawed the ice, slowly, painfully – he almost felt like he could breathe again. Five, six, seven. Twelve. Fourteen.  
  
“Hibari!”  
  
Yamamoto’s voice distracted him, a moment’s lapse. His feet paused, tonfa firmly gripped but purposeless, and another black-suited man aligned the muzzle of his gun, firing in quick succession. He stepped out of the range, the will to punish humming in his veins, but Yamamoto was faster. His sword hissed, the wind ruptured and slashed – fifteen.  
  
“That was close.”  
  
“Because you showed up.”  
  
Yamamoto’s smile was a smooth, opaque mask that shielded him from reality. It was there on his face as he looked around, seeing but not seeing, katana still poised. Neither of them noticed the sixteenth, lying half-dead in his own pool of blood amidst fallen comrades, hand trembling but aim correct.   
  
His finger rested on the trigger, lips curving into a smile. _Vongola’s Guardians–_  
  
The gun never fired its round. Hibari heard his name – _his first name_ – trembling above a sharp, cracking sound, and he whirled around. Seconds were split into moments, strength leaving his arms as dusk’s shadowy half-light cascaded over gold, down to a familiar face and a long stretch of black whip from two bandaged hands.  
  
And then it returned with renewed vengeance, a painful rush in his chest. He snarled, disabling the prone man with a kick to the head, and went for the real kill.  
  
  
–  
  
  
23.  
His nineteenth birthday was a messy affair, a combination of Dino’s ludicrous ideas, the Cavallone Family’s seemingly endless supply of fund, and everyone else’s lack of inhibition. He had threatened and discouraged everyone with a glower and a glint of tonfa since the day before, one person in particular, who only smiled and kept a safe distance after wishing him the happiest birthday early in the morning.  
  
They laid a trap at dinner, from Sawada to the lowliest minions in the Cavallone hierarchy. There was safety in numbers, they believed, fortified by ribbons, banners, and a giant cake that reigned over one end of the party table.  
  
Unfortunately, Hibari Kyouya did not belong with clichéd idioms. That night, he forwent dinner and lurked the streets of Milan, Hibird a soaring company above him in the sea of glowing pale lights. The anonymity didn’t quite make him feel like a victor, and he spent most of the evening with his back pressed to the window of a closed florist, listening to a blind street performer building notes from riff to riff with his violin. Audience came and went, coins trickling into a tin cup, and the violinist smiled unseeing as his bow sang an overture to another, another, and then another song.  
  
Only after the night’s chill had set in and the instrument had slipped into the velvet-lined case of a well-worn box, that Hibari realised he had brought nothing with him. The violinist departed with quiet, careful footsteps, a walking stick in hand, and disappeared beyond a grey arc of bridge.   
  
Hibird settled on his left shoulder as he walked back to the Cavallone mansion, softly repeating a melody he had just learned. Hibari listened, following the ballad halfway until it made a sharp turn into another song in his mind. More cheerful. More festive.  
  
A birthday’s.  
  
His stomach ached from lack of food, which must also account for the slight tremor of his fingers as he pulled his jacket closer around his frame. He began the song faintly, just a hum, enough to pique Hibird’s interest. The night, vast and starless above, swallowed his voice within its inborn hush, indifferent, merciless, until the last few words frayed, disappeared.  
  
 _‘Happy birthday, Kyouya, happy birthday~’_  
  
His lips twisted, not quite a smile, as Hibird undauntedly picked up the teetering song. His chirps were shrill, but not unpleasant, and they distracted him from the gaping hollow in his chest – stubbornness, stupidity, it took him a strange, entirely unfamiliar city to consider loneliness a threat. The emotions and laughter in discordant voices, white noise swirling about him. And then the inscrutable words, despite the number of times he had heard Dino addressing his subordinates in their mother tongue.  
  
Pitiful, he thought, and pathetic.  
  
“Kyouya!”  
  
Hibird stopped singing and welcomed the interruption with inarticulate twitters instead. Black shadows were the first familiar hint to catch Hibari’s eyes, followed by the centre of them all, the life and breath of the Cavallone Family, scouring the streets at night without any heed of the risks – all for what, he wanted to ask, all for _what._  
  
“I thought I’d never find you.” Dino was panting, more from anxiety than genuine exertion. His hands were empty, fingers coiled, and then uncoiled, wanting to touch except for a warning that still echoed in the space between them. Hibari noticed and looked away.  
  
“I won’t get lost,” he growled, aggression a spontaneous presence, but his voice held none of its usual spite. Dino smiled, as if he knew, somehow.  
  
“That’s good,” he said, his voice warm, his presence real, and then offered a hand. “Let’s go home now, Kyouya. You must be tired.”  
  
He gave it a cursory glance, quiet, emotionless. One day, that hand would no longer be there to offer its service. One day Dino would no longer look for him when he decided to disappear. One day, one day...  
  
Hibari decided that he didn’t care.  
  
  
–  
  
  
24.  
The only reason why Cavallone was still alive was Yamamoto – quick, conveniently placed, and very much aware of Hibari’s homicidal intention. Still, he would have been able to deal with the Rain Guardian and carry out the murder swiftly, if not for Romario’s inopportune arrival.  
  
This seemed to be what everyone believed. Hibari did not disagree – he still found his fingers straying to the handle of his tonfa every few minutes or so – and his rage did not cool down. It was a tall, roaring, angry fire, inextinguishable even after some hours of walking in the woods. Alone. The quietness only provoked him, lent his bristling mind many ideas to make war among themselves. He returned cold and shivering and still very much irritable that even Yamamoto kept his undying cheerfulness in check.  
  
“Where is he?”  
  
“One of the bedrooms.” The Rain Guardian's face was half shadowed in the stifling hallway, his voice calm. “In the back.”  
  
He stalked toward the indicated direction, past a few bewildered Cavallone men, and found doors closely huddled together. Chrome lay unconscious beyond the first one, the sickly pallor latching onto her skin a reminder to something much worse. Hibari left her and moved on to the next – empty. The last door stood defiantly, as if challenging him, and he found some satisfaction in kicking it open, surprising the occupant of the room.   
  
“Kyouya?”  
  
He slammed the door shut, the sound echoing sharply off four corners of the walls. His narrowed eyes watched as Dino jumped to a sitting position on the bed, wisps of half-sleep robbing him of his usual leonine grace.   
  
“You’re back,” he said, blinking, as if it was somehow _normal_ , this whole situation. Hibari felt his fury returning full force.  
  
“I hate you,” he snarled – and meant every word. He would let his tonfa speak the rest of his ire, if not for the shadows of fatigue on his victim’s face – death, leaving footprints on its wake.  
  
“Kyouya, please,” Dino was imploring, hands raised defensively in front of his chest. “I can’t fight you right now. Unless you want to fight a half-dead man who has no strength to defend himself.”  
  
Hibari scowled, but his tonfa slipped back under his sleeves. His steps were heavy, near tentative as he moved towards the bed. “Your hands,” he demanded, brusque, hostile.  
  
“Ah.” Weak relief flooded Dino’s face, smothered a little by embarrassment much too familiar to register fully. “This one was shot.” He indicated his left hand, the bandage new, pristine, white – and then the other. “This one has a fractured bone because I hit someone’s head too hard. They’re both now almost completely healed though.”  
  
“Weakling,” Hibari snapped, fingers twitching in their own grasp. “Herbivore.”  
  
“I’m sorry.” Dino smiled, still smiling when Hibari covered his lips with his, abrupt, careless, decisive in a way that made desperation seemed like a joke. He fell, pinned onto the bed, his mouth thoroughly ravaged by tongue and teeth alike. Gentleness did not become Hibari, even – _especially_ – to an injured man. Dino was left gasping when it ended, eyes glazed, a new, loving sheen replacing that of drowsiness.  
  
“Did Tsuna send you here?” he asked, fingers threading wet hair as black as night, soaking the bandage.  
  
Hibari’s eyes darkened and he latched his teeth on Dino’ collarbone. “I,” he growled, punctuating each word with a sharp bite, “follow no one’s order.”  
  
Dino hummed, content, all too trusting. He was weak, defenceless, and he was braving meetings with him like this, as if Hibari Kyouya were not a force to be reckoned with, as if Hibari Kyouya were not as dangerous as whispers of dark tales in the mafia underworld made him to be. It made him want to maim, maul, _kill_ , just to show the insufferable idiot that he could.  
  
“You’re a fool,” he hissed, his hands moving along hard angles and jutting bones, nails scratching across naked skin. Hibari decided that he loathed to relinquish this – this right to touch Cavallone’s boss, everything, everything that belonged to him – even to the omnipotent death. It wasn’t about chains. It was about rights, and perhaps, to a greater extent, pride.  
  
“Take your clothes off, Kyouya,” Dino said instead, considerate and oblivious at once. “They’re wet. You’ll catch a cold at this rate.”  
  
Hibari kissed him again to shut him up. He didn’t want to hear orders, questions, words, just moans. Most of the times, pain worked marvels to the vocal chords – pleasure, not so much, but it might if given unasked.   
  
“I’m going to fuck you.”  
  
Dino’s eyes snapped open, surprised, the words much too powerful, slow to sink in. And then he laughed, the sound rich, majestic in its all hoarse, broken glory. “I’m all yours, my beautiful skylark,” he said and made it seem less like a surrender – an offer instead, and Hibari wanted to hurt him for it. Everything, he just had to take _everything_...  
  
“I hate you,” he said again, and still meant every word. Dino stopped laughing, his eyes subdued, his hands still warm on Hibari’s hips.  
  
“I’m all yours,” he repeated – and also meant every word. Hibari snarled, feral, bitter, fingers digging deep enough to bruise. But Dino’s arms were tight around his body, holding him like an anchor with each thrust, even when he growled, over and over again, _I’m going to kill you, I’m the one who will kill you, you fucking bastard, you have no right to die._  
  
“I know,” he heard Dino whisper, voice thick amidst quiet gasps slipping past his swollen lips. “I know. I’m sorry.”  
  
  
–  
  
  
25\.   
“Teach me Italian.”  
  
Dino’s first response was a chuckle, far closer than he was supposed to. “Kyouya, you’re drunk,” he pointed out gently. “Sleep it off and ask me again tomorrow, if you still want it.”  
  
Hibari grunted something unintelligible. He felt the blanket pulled over his body, and a hand combing his hair, but the lethargy which had settled in his muscles was unusual, extraordinary enough to keep him under its spell. He wondered if it was the drink – too many names, but they were all alcoholic, Dino’s compliments after they had taken their share of the party’s leftovers for dinner.  
  
“I would have offered you none,” Dino said again, this time with a penitent sigh, “if I had known about your low tolerance.”  
  
“Still your fault,” Hibari declared, or at least tried to, for it came out all thick and garbled. Dino laughed, suddenly even closer.  
  
“ _Buona notte_ ,” his voice was soft, a whisper in his ears, “ _e sogni d'oro, amore mio._ ”  
  
He didn’t quite catch the words, didn’t see the warm affection in Dino’s eyes, and didn’t heed the light kiss on his temple. But the warmth lingered, still a cradle around his body even after he had left – like a friend, a lover.  
  
Came morning, he wake up cold, with head pounding, and very much alone.  
  
  
–  
  
  
26.  
The rain had been constant company since morning. Yamamoto found little trouble to adjust, but the others were edgy, caught in the stitches of murk and relentless, drumming sound on the earth above their head.   
  
Tomorrow would decide whether they lived or died.  
  
Romario’s voice was sombre as he reiterated the plan, for the fourth time that afternoon. Cavallone’s men listened, terrified under the cloaked fate looming over them, or just weary, wishing the night to come quickly so they could get this done and over with. Dino sat on one of the few chairs in the room, his calmness their foothold, their scaffolding, everything that defined order in the crumbling family.  
  
“3 A.M.,” Romario repeated, possibly for the hundredth time. Hibari was on the verge of incapacitating him for the sake of not listening to this monotony ever again, when Dino interrupted, tapping a finger on the table.  
  
“You worry too much, Romario,” he chided. The raw strength in his voice was not a child of this moment, this place, this ordeal, but a source so innate within him that no tribulation could remove. Some of the men breathed out, tension dissipating from their muscles, and two even braved a feeble smile.   
  
Romario’s face was carefully blank – he was probably the only one who knew how Dino had won that buried fountain. “As long as you’re sure, Boss.”  
  
“Of course I’m sure.” His grin was like lightning, quick and sharp, enough to stir up courage in his audience. “Remember, I’m the man who led the family away from ruin. We won’t fall only because of this.”  
  
Hibari had been listening, more and more sickened by each word, by the arrogant display of confidence. This man had the pale shadow of death under his eyes and he dared to speak of survival. It made his blood sing, his predator instinct hum, and his fingers itch to destroy.  
  
“You’re also the man who almost brought it down with your stupidity.”  
  
Heads snapped to his direction. The air hung thick and heavy in the cocoon of silence as they watched, waited. Dino actually had looked surprised for a moment – and perhaps there was a smidgen of _hurt_ haunting the look in his eyes, Hibari didn’t care to notice – before his expression smoothed over once more, polite in its indifference. “Yes,” he said, his eyes hooded, tone aloof, smile no longer smiling. “You’re absolutely right, Kyouya. But one learns from one’s mistake. One does not wallow in it, no matter how grievous, and that, I believe, is my responsibility to my family.”   
  
“Of course, Dino-san.” Yamamoto was quick to intervene, the arc of his back firm, challenging, his smiles all the same and uniform whether in caution or defiance. Hibari looked past his shoulders, at Dino’s expressionless face.  
  
He didn’t linger in the room.  
  
  
–  
  
  
27.  
On their third day in Verona, Dino insisted to show him around – _the abode of Romeo and Juliet_ , as he persistently called it. Only the two of them, with a _few_ of his bodyguards of course, since Tsuna and the rest were quite happy to amuse themselves for a day.  
  
It wasn’t unpleasant, Hibari grudgingly admitted. Verona was a beautiful city in its own right, and the presence of black-suited men trailing their steps helped to keep others away. Dino was exuberant, oblivious to the fearful, often hostile looks aimed at their entourage – or perhaps, simply used to them. His words were waterfalls of explanations, indefatigable even before Hibari’s wall of silence, and Hibari couldn’t help but wonder, if a bit wryly, why a mafia boss would bother to store this much of useless information in the limited space of his head.  
  
He only touched him once, when a whirlwind of movements blurred around them in the middle of a crowded promenade. He found himself surrounded, Dino’s left arm around his slighter frame, the other hand poised on his whip.  
  
 _False alarm,_ Dino said afterward with an apologetic smile – it happened a lot, especially in public places. The crowd had dispersed, driven away by brandished guns and murderous aura too intense even to the most clueless. The earlier display of protectiveness struck a wrong cord in him and Dino’s fingers left marks on his arm, burning under the sleeves of his shirt. Hibari ignored it as they retreated from the area, avoiding the _polizie_ who always arrived a little too late – a matter of formality.  
  
“We still have some time before dinner,” Dino said as they strolled along the edge of _Piazza della Erbe_ , the darkening blue sky streaked with red and orange. His bodyguards were shadows on the periphery, still keeping vigil. “Why don’t you want to see Juliet’s balcony?”  
  
“She committed suicide,” Hibari said contemptuously, “for a husband who _also_ committed suicide.”  
  
A faint, affectionate smile curled at the corner of Dino’s lips. “No, Kyouya, it wasn’t for her husband,” he corrected, his tone indulging, with a twist of deference on the subject. “It was for love. Love makes you do things, and more often than not, they are stupid.”  
  
Hibari snorted in distaste. “It’s an excuse.”  
  
“Maybe,” he conceded. “But then again, what is life without a little romance?”  
  
“Sanity.”   
  
“A barren desert.” Dino retaliated with a dramatic sigh. “A life without life itself, too dreadful even to think about.”  
  
It was the sigh – or maybe it was the polenta he had eaten after lunch – that made him push Dino into an alleyway, pressed him up to the wall, and kissed him hard enough to rip a moan from his throat. There were hasty footsteps, always alert, always ready to be alarmed, followed by a tactful retreat, equally swift in execution. Hibari smirked and bit down, earning a surprised gasp.  
  
Dino’s eyes were glazed when he pulled back, lower lip tinged with red – a vulgar colour, but not unbecoming. “You are so unfair, Kyouya,” he said, _complained,_ frustration thick between tender folds of amusement in his eyes. “Everything has to abide by your rules?”  
  
“Take it or leave it,” Hibari growled, knee trailing up the inside of Dino’s thigh. The arms around his body were like iron clamps, but Dino laughed.  
  
“I doubt I have any other choice,” he admitted and now he was kissing Hibari, submitting his fate to a lifetime of worship, perverse and cruel and insufferably unjust. Because Hibari Kyouya was a selfish, vengeful god. There was no payment he would condescend to accept but that of pride and freedom, blood at its thickest.  
  
One man, a fool, laid them all at his feet.  
  
  
–  
  
  
28.  
“That,” Dino snapped, “was uncalled-for.”  
  
The silence that flourished after the door was slammed shut behind his angry footsteps was ringing in their ears. Hibari regarded him coolly, eyes dark, a faint sneer on his lips. “I wonder.”  
  
“You were undermining my authority in front of my own family.” Dino in rage was a rare sight. His eyes shone, amber sharp, storm-bound, and even the feeble lighting in the bedroom couldn’t make him less than what he was. A wounded animal, Hibari reflected, watching.  
  
“It is not authority,” he said, foreign poison on his tongue, “if it can be undermined.”  
  
A spark of disbelief made it all sharper, his eyes narrowed. “Stop being mad at me, Kyouya,” Dino hissed, raking a hand through golden hair, perhaps an effort to hold back. “Yes, I’m stupid for getting myself in this mess, but I don’t like it any more than you do.”  
  
“What makes you think I care,” Hibari said icily, gaze sliding past stiff set of shoulders, dismissive. Dino laughed, short and scathing.   
  
“We both know that you don’t. There's no need to remind me at every given chance."  
  
Hibari’s eyes snapped back at him. “Your denial doesn’t.”  
  
“That wasn’t the...” Dino paused, stared at him, his faze frozen in a stunned, horrified look. When it melted, it shed pretences and self-control along with the flow. “Oh. _Oh._ God, this is hilarious.”  
  
And then he laughed, as if to prove his point, a laugh that rumbled mockeries and shook foundations of ages old. Hibari was not amused. This was a game he knew neither the beginning nor the end, only the single rule – _hurt the other as much as you can, as bad as you can_ – and it didn’t feel like he was winning.   
  
“Now I see,” Dino said again, calm, storm raging far underneath. His lips twisted into an unpleasant curve. “I’ve caught you, haven’t I, Kyouya?”  
  
“What,” Hibari deadpanned, “are you talking about.”  
  
“I have.” Dino’s tone was contemplative, a jarring contrast to his expression. “That’s why you’re mad at me. You were worried.”  
  
Hibari didn’t bother to slip the cold of metal into his grip. His fist connected with Dino’s face, making him stumble, pain in his jaw and hair in his eyes. But it was not enough – Dino was smiling, ruthless, the smile of ancient gods that delivered floods and earthquakes in answer to prayers, only because they liked to watch the world burn.  
  
“Does it feel good?” he asked, curiosity almost genuine, his smile a morbid touch. “To know that your heart is in somebody else’s hand?”   
  
Hibari snarled again, and this time lunged with an intent to kill. Dino was fast enough, strong enough to hold him back, wrist gracefully twisted to clamp fingers around his fisted hands. “I’ve caught you,” he repeated, a whisper, the words spilling like a taunt from his lips, black silk that wound slowly around Hibari’s neck, cool and smooth and enchanting enough to make him understand betrayal when it suddenly pulled.  
  
“I’ll bite you to death,” he decided, once and for all.   
  
“Don’t.” Dino was still smiling, his eyes cold. “Your heart will die with me, _amore mio_.”  
  
  
–  
  
  
29\.   
“Can we meet?”  
  
“No.”  
  
There was a pause, a frustrated sigh. “Kyouya, it has been six months. I miss you.”  
  
“That’s your problem,” he answered flatly. Verona haunted his mind, not the kiss, not the fuck, but Dino’s smiles, quiet, obliging, _possessive._ Like a cat that finally had its claws around a bird it had set its eyes upon for so long, only to admire it, caress its feathers, put it inside a gilded cage.  
  
Rotten analogy.  
  
“Why don’t you miss me?” Dino was speaking again, the abject note in his voice more real than even the sunlight in his eyes. Hibari hated how it tickled his irritation, spiralled his patience downward. No one had that influence over him, no one would, ever.  
  
“You don’t deserve it,” he said, and snapped his cell phone shut. Rancour tasted foul in his mouth and there was a trembling sigh on his lips – an admission, a riptide, fast and brutal, shredding his poise to pieces. This was supposed to be simple.  
  
 _My rules, Bucking Horse, or nothing at all._  
  
But he had fucked up, somewhere, somehow, and his set of rules were coming apart at the seams. His survival came first, and he put a distance, stayed away, scraping at the splinter wedged so deep inside his person that some part of him always ached.  
  
He did survive. Dino still obeyed the rules, despite losing a shade of his smile each time they met. They still fucked, and Dino still came with his eyes clenched shut, Hibari’s name on his lips.  
  
Until, one day, he disappeared without a word, and Hibari found himself less than all of him.  
  
  
–  
  
  
30.  
His lungs burned as he broke through close ranks of enemy, anger fuelling his flame, stark bright in the deepening night. 3 A.M. was six hours away and yet here he was, hell’s wrath in every swipe of his tonfa.  
  
Herbivores, he thought, herbivores all of them. He could make it out alive by himself. Fuck the plan. He should have done this from the start.   
  
He should have not come.  
  
Regret did not befit him and so he cast it aside, alongside a man who had just fallen victim to his tonfa. There was a throbbing pain in his left thigh, more acute than million others scattered across his body. They were screaming in turn with each tendon pulled, each muscle abused, but Hibari didn’t allow himself a pause. Better those, than the strange ache in his chest, clawing at him slowly, slowly, each pinprick-pain a reminder worse and worse still – Dino lying bruised on the floor, with that smirk still on his lips, finding enough courage to kiss him, and then _bite_ his tongue.  
  
 _Your heart will die with me._  
  
Roots and trees were no longer on his heels when he encountered the next group, moving just as fast as the one before them, and the one before, and the seven before, if his subconscious was counting. He didn’t slacken his grip, but his body disobeyed, legs crumbling, and for the briefest moment, Hibari wondered if death might look like Apollo, golden-haired, majestic, his scorching retribution through tender touches and affectionate words.  
  
Fool, he thought. Pathetic. One hand on the damp earth, and he was back on his feet, purple flame sprouting like wings from the back of his hands.  
  
Hibari Kyouya was a vengeful god, with a feral smile in the face of death, no one at his side.   
  
  
–  
  
  
 _“Ti amo.”  
  
“I know what that means,” Hibari said darkly, itching to throw the book at him.  
  
“Do you?” Dino’s smile was gentle, wistful. “Then say it, Kyouya.”  
  
“No.”  
  
He leaned closer, eyes dark depth with no boundary, impervious. “Say it.”  
  
Hibari kissed him.  
  
  
 **End Part 2**_

 


	3. The Wheel

“Juudaime.”

Alone, Gokudera’s voice was a knife that cut. Underlined by his invariable loyalty, it lent an awkward sort of companionship which had long since smoothed its bites and stings into comfort. His expression was reserved solely for concern when he added, “Maybe you should return to the villa and rest. I will continue the search.”

Tsuna blinked the mist out of his eyes. They tingled in the cold, under a sky that had softened into light grey. Morning was on its tail, swift to chase night out of the horizon.

“I’m fine.” He made sure to throw a reassuring smile at his Storm Guardian before casting his gaze to the forest, where sunrise crested treetops and shadows still lurked in the deep. All things considered, the rescue mission had been moderately successful. His first and foremost objective was achieved and Dino was now receiving medical treatment in a makeshift tent. Yamamoto and Chrome, both injured but alive and breathing, had now returned to his side.

His Cloud was another story.

“There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be all right.” The voice was close, intimate, but not intrusive. Gokudera only recognised boundaries and decorum when it came to one person, that with flame strong enough to bind his fealty. Tsuna looked at him, affection in his eyes, and while his heart might be inclined to be eased, the line of his mouth remained grim.

“I know I shouldn’t worry about Hibari-san, but...”

His lips were dry and slightly chapped. He bit them fiercely, wondering if there was any way to word his intuition, explain in a language less abstract the length of his concern. A trusted companion over years, he knew when to rely on it – and now it whispered to him this, not the confidence which customarily came with Hibari Kyouya’s name.

It was Dino’s eyes, if he were to delve more into the whys. Hooded, they had retreated deep behind their shutters when Tsuna confessed himself unaware of Hibari’s whereabouts. No one had seen him, but, he stumbled in confusion, brows furrowed, wasn’t he supposed to move out together, with _them_?

He didn’t need a quick, sidelong look from the corner of Yamamoto’s eyes to know that something was wrong.

But things were always wrong, between two so incongruent. Hibari had never been the cloud to Dino’s sky, the blood to Dino’s heart, or the black to Dino’s white. He was neither a complement nor a converse, because he was never anything with a name or a reason. A pillar not beneath any roof, a star not within any constellation, and still he witnessed Dino trying to take all implications of distance and solitude in one stride and render them null.

It would have been inspiring, if not so painful to watch. Tsuna couldn’t remember since when he had begun to wear an apologetic smile in front of Dino – and those bruises, really, they couldn’t have been _all_ Hibari’s fault, could they?

Some hurt went deeper than that. He knew this when Kusakabe appeared, a body too small, too still in his arms, and the foundations of his world shook a little. His mind understood, recognised fact for what it was, a human body for its frailties and restrictions, but Hibari, somehow, stood above it all. He was always better, always invincible, always exceeding expectations, always, always, _always._

“He,” Kusakabe was speaking in a wild, tight voice, the staccato of his breath drowned by the urgency in his tone, “ordered me to take him elsewhere.”

But he had disobeyed and Tsuna pressed his lips together as Gokudera shouted for medics. Two doctors arrived, the Tenth Cavallone on their heels, a stony look frozen on his face even as he took in Hibari’s condition. It only wavered once, when Kusakabe, clearly indisposed to relinquish his boss to the care of medical experts, slowly set Hibari down on the cot they had brought. The motion jerked him out of his unconsciousness and his eyes flung open, wild and accusing, a pained gasp on the sharp curve of his lips.

Everyone stilled. His gaze came to life all of a sudden, eyes narrowing in distaste at the crowd, past the striking shade of Dino’s hair much too quickly. It settled vindictively on Kusakabe, the man still kneeling at his side with a look that would have seemed contrite on a less wooden face.

“You dare defy...”

The rest of his words were swallowed by a violent coughing fit, raspy, bloodless, a torment to Tsuna’s ears. One of the medics had sufficient presence of mind to seize this chance and give him a shot, but he was not quick enough. Hibari’s instinct rebelled and Tsuna saw Dino move, knew the mess this action would have caused if allowed, and swiftly put himself on the way. He had seen it, how Dino exploited the attribute of his flame and its power over others, but for once, it was his hand which touched the side of Hibari’s arm.

The sensation nearly overpowered him. His focus momentarily frayed, stumbling in the whirl of Hibari’s turbulent flame, vicious and unbridled as the older man kept his defences elsewhere, against pain more physical and demanding. It took him a reach beyond his limit of concentration, his head aching, thoughts punctuated by the recurrent mantra of how _anyone_ could handle this more than once, to emerge victorious in the shambolic fight. Slowly, he felt Hibari go limp, flame lulled into restless quiet as his consciousness sank to a deep sleep.

Tsuna opened his eyes to Gokudera’s hands steady on his shoulders and Dino’s carefully blank stare. He rose to his feet, mouth a grim line as he nodded at the doctors to take Hibari away, and assumed the role of Vongola Tenth.

“We need to speak.”

–

Tsuna said nothing when Dino politely declined his offer to stay in the Vongola Mansion. _My family,_ he declared and needed not say more, for this was true, spoken as a true leader should, and Tsuna understood. A part of him wanted to object, reason that _his_ injuries were nowhere near superficial – and many of them bore marks of tonfa, which unsettled him deeply – but he held his tongue and nodded concession.

“If there is anything I can help, please don’t hesitate to tell me, Dino-san.”

His answer was a smile stripped bare of any humour that even its gratitude lay wasted on barren solitude. “We will have to do this alone,” he said, in his expression a spark of pride that Tsuna recognised he himself lacked. “That’s the only way to get back on our feet, for real.”

“Then maybe in the manner of information?” he pressed his case on a different avenue. “Your intelligence network is now half-crippled as a result of the attack, Dino-san. At least allow me to help this much, as a friend and ally.”

A pause, an unnecessary one, occurred, its presence heavy, invasive, but noiseless. Tsuna couldn’t quite understand this hesitation, neither its origin nor its purpose, but wisely kept the opinion to himself. He breathed slow and steady, awaiting answer – the inevitable one, for they both knew that there was revenge still. Dino might be one of the most merciful dons in their pugnacious underworld, but debts cast away unpaid often demanded a worse, greater payment in the end. They both had learnt this the hard way. As long as Dormiglione was yet to crumble to its knees, it remained an albatross around their neck, to Cavallone and its allies.

More than once or twice, Tsuna considered advising against it. Forgiveness was nearly always better – they hardly needed blood or vengeance to be strong. But he had seen the dead bodies that tightened Dino’s jaw, robbed his face of all colours and mirth, and then he thought about his own guardians and his blood turned to ice, mercy slipping from his slackening grasp.

Humans, he thought. They were just humans, as easy an excuse it was.

“As a friend and ally.” Dino repeated solemnly, but half the cloud had not gone from his face. Nevertheless he nodded, the movement smooth, polished, eyes firmly trained on him. “Thank you, Tsuna.”

“Don’t mention it.” He breathed freely now, with a faint smile that eased each passage. “You would do the same, if not more.”

The tent was now brightly lit as sunrise slowly yielded to morning, and Tsuna could clearly see the other man’s face, angry bruises stark against the washed-out pale of strain and weariness. He felt his stomach knot, heard the lament in his head, not for the first time, why Dino couldn’t have chosen a gentler soul to love, why Hibari just couldn’t, couldn’t, _couldn’t._ Everything was couldn’t with that man – or _wouldn’t,_ rather, for he was no victim of single-choices.

“I know you will take care of every member of your family well,” Dino spoke again, his voice low, almost uncertain as he stared at his tangled fingers. “He... what happened to him was largely my fault, but I must stay with my family until everything is settled.”

For once, Tsuna was glad that Dino was not looking at him. He bit his lips, and he remembered murmuring a few words, and then sentences to reassure a broken man, promises that he himself thought nigh impossible to keep. But Tsuna recalled his younger years, when impossibility had been every bullet that found aim in the angle of Reborn’s fingers. Resolve alone had shown him the way.

“I promise,” he said.

And if there was a reason, if he _ever_ needed any reason at all, then the aching numb-pain in Dino’s smile was more than enough.

–

“He... refused?”

“Speak with him, if you want.” Shamal shrugged indifferent shoulders, both hands thrust deep into his white coat’s pockets, posture defensive. “I’m sure as hell won’t put my life on the line for a patient who doesn’t even wish to recover.”

Tsuna was startled. “You mean–”

“No,” Shamal’s smirk was wry, almost listless in its lack of concern. “That guy’s definitely got issues but suicide isn’t one of them. All I’m saying is I can’t treat him until he sorts them out nicely, but that isn’t going to happen anytime soon, right?”

Tsuna was astonished, but he couldn’t say that he was surprised when Shamal came to him with the news that his Cloud Guardian had plainly refused further medical treatment once he was coherent enough to do so. Maybe he should have foreseen this, he thought feebly, and spared him the headache and Hibari the pain.

“I’ll talk to him,” he decided. There was a ghost of a grin on Shamal’s face, wishing him a silent and ominous good luck.

There turned out to be no talk at all. He could scarcely walk into Hibari’s wing of residence without the howling fury of Cloud’s flame spiralling and crushing down his frame. Stealth made no difference to Hibari, since his honed warrior instinct did not allow him ignorance. And then, of course, Tsuna quickly remembered what he and _his flame_ had done, and made a swift retreat from the area lest the reaction did more harm to his injured guardian than it would to him.

Nigh impossible to keep, he thought, was a severe understatement.

–

Bits of news came every afternoon from Kusakabe, face darkened by storm that refused to lift. Tsuna sat behind his desk and read the awkward combination of plea and accusation in his knitted brow. He felt an itch in his toes, to do something, anything, but there was very little he could do. The same trick wouldn’t work twice on Hibari, and he knew no other.

Maybe Kusakabe understood, because he returned every day and reported, if reluctantly, that perhaps Hibari’s condition did improve. _Perhaps,_ for his medical knowledge was limited to superficial wounds that his boss often came back with. In return, Tsuna made sure to slip a word or two concerning the Cavallone _famiglia,_ what little his spies could garner in the midst of the guerrilla war Dino was waging. Between keeping relative order in this tumultuous time and intimidating any potential enemy not to stand in Dino’s way, he went to a restless sleep every night.

On the fifth day, he succumbed to riddles of anxiety and asked Yamamoto _the_ question.

“I’m not sure if it’s any of our business,” was Yamamoto’s reply. His smile was constant, invariable, and this one he wore when he had either nothing else to show or everything to hide. But the quiet politeness in his voice was an unfamiliar presence, enough to serve as a warning.

“I understand,” Tsuna replied, evening the ground. “But I won’t pry unless it is very important for me to know.”

Yamamoto took a moment’s silence for the weight of knowledge to sink in, and then said, “I can only tell you what I know.”

Tsuna nodded and Yamamoto began. The forest, thick with mist, riddled with memories that hummed different tunes from one’s recall to another. Their wet, cold journey had knocked many doors, and behind one of them was the unspoken depth of Hibari’s anger, despair, hatred, apathy – he hardly knew what to name it. And then Dino, with his smile which stood unrivalled and his stubborn masquerade of strength, the spiked armour he wore for he had to be impervious to everything, and somewhere in between, seven kinds of hell had broken loose. An argument, Yamamoto said, his voice growing flat with each word, muted enough to cast a deeper shadow on Romario’s face. Words were dangerous, but sometimes fists could hurt worse.

“He left soon after that, alone. I would have stopped him if I had known what he intended to do, but...” Yamamoto shrugged. “It was an excuse.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” Tsuna rose to his feet, went around his chair to grip the back with his fingers, cold leather yielding quickly to heat. The frown was heavy lines between his brow, and he looked up, holding Yamamoto’s gaze. “Did you see him?”

A pause, and then, “Yes.”

The hurt clawed him fast and painful, but Tsuna dismissed it just as quickly, struck it down as unreasonable and downright irrational. Then relief came flooding in, a welcomed substitute.

“Kusakabe-san said that he was doing better.”

Yamamoto looked at him and there was sympathy, too much like pity, in his eyes. “He will survive,” he said, clear-spoken and firm in all his insouciance. Tsuna tried to match the effort, but pretence still did not come easily to him, despite demands and practices.

“This isn’t just about pride, is this?” he asked, mournful instead, much too world-weary to hide behind any facade.

A smile curled Yamamoto’s lips, honest but grim. “With him, who knows?”

–

Nearly five weeks had passed before Dino finally made his first contact.

“Maybe I should say congratulations?” Tsuna asked, a little uncomfortably, after they had both made certain of each other’s health, if not well-being. Dormiglione sank like a great, lumbering ship, slowly at first, and then fast spinning its own demise as Poseidon called vengeance forth and his ocean sucked every nail and timbre and steel to its depth. Tsuna read each report with uncurbed shudder as the shadow realm of _Cosa Nostra_ trembled in fear. He mourned the loss of so many lives, just as he mourned for the hands that pulled the trigger.

“I don’t think it’s quite applicable in this case.” Dino’s laugh was thin, his breathing slow, accentuated, and Tsuna didn’t even dare imagine his face. “There was a source from within, Tsuna. It was the reason why we had so many casualties.”

The sting of betrayal was needle-sharp and it didn’t fade with time. He sank deeper into his seat, away from the walls that seemed to suddenly close down upon him.

“You expected that.”

“I did,” Dino’s confession was underlined with self-reproach, “but only after it had happened. There had been rumours, before, but I hadn’t taken any action.”

An unpaid debt, Tsuna thought, that demanded greater payment. He still remembered Fuuta’s ranking, yet unchanged, of Dino’s compassion in a world that demanded less. He tried not to think about Vongola and how many spies and enemy’s limbs must be lurking within their ranks, and found refuge, as shallow as it was, in pouring his attention to the other man’s debacle.

“Has everything been settled?”

“Relatively.” A pause was applied, deliberate, each fraction of a second with a purpose. “But there is still much to do to reclaim our lost authority. I’m afraid I won’t be able to visit Japan anytime soon.”

“I see.” Tsuna swallowed his disappointment and forced himself to see sense. It was perhaps just as well, at least until Hibari recuperated fully. Neither of them, one’s limp physical and the other mental, could afford another scene at the moment – although really, he reflected wryly, who was he to ever judge the strength of these two men, far beyond his ken as they had so often proved.

“How is he?” came the uneasy question, wrapped in too much reserve it almost lost its curious edge.

Tsuna found the same reserve on his lips. “He is recovering,” he answered, omitting any unpleasant detail for all good intents and purposes. At that moment, his intuition flickered, sharply reminding him of its presence and perspicacity. Vongola’s hyper intuition never sat on the sidelines and offered counsel. It commanded, arrogant and complacent in its invulnerability to errors, and once more Tsuna found himself a servant to the whimsical master.

“But maybe a visit will do him good,” he added, against his own judgment.

Maybe Dino was smiling, one born not out of amusement, but rather an excuse to fill a vacant space. “I doubt it will help in the way you imagine, Tsuna,” he spoke calmly, without inflection. “He’s stronger than that.”

“Don’t,” the word abruptly left his mouth and Tsuna had no intention to hold down the rest. “Please don’t, Dino-san. You’re the only one who doesn’t see him like that and if he loses this...”

What then? His mind drew blank – _what then._ Hibari would still be Hibari, and everyone would still treat him like a war god, a being so strong he no longer belonged amongst human. The Cloud Guardian clearly preferred it that way, but Dino, Dino had refused to fit in with the rest of them from day one. _Kyouya,_ he had called, daring, cavalier, ignorant of the winding, thorny path his feet had taken with that one barrier torn down. The rest was a Domino Effect which would stop only at Dino’s call – and he never made one.

“You know this cannot last, Tsuna,” but he spoke quietly, nothing like the confident man who was determined to court death with an interminable smile and little else. A part of Tsuna feared what had happened, what had brought this change, but the rest simply froze as the words stumbled into sense.

“Then what are you doing?” His voice gained the coldness of ice when speech returned within his power. He was astonished, disappointed, angry, frustrated – and only after the silence had brewed long enough that he questioned whether he had a claim on any of those swirling emotions.

But oh he did. He certainly did.

“I love him,” Dino said, plaintive, a fact so old and dry it shrivelled like dead leaves under the sun. But there was never any question in this, not a shade of doubt. Even madness was not enough to play-act devotion such as his, all these years, if stood alone. There must be love to guide its hand, and together they defined what Tsuna had the misfortune to witness; the old conundrum, when an immovable object met an unstoppable force.

“Perhaps you should decide,” he surprised even himself with the calmness that ruled his voice, “before you come to see him.” A pause, a silent debate, but his choice was clear. “Or I must advise against it,” he cautioned.

If Dino was at all surprised at his warning, it was manifested in a laugh, short and impossibly false. In a none-too-gentle voice that still lay beneath arches of mockery, he pointed out to Tsuna that Hibari would surely kill him if ever he found out about this protecting stunt he was trying to pull.

Tsuna smiled at the emptiness of his office, finding the expression oddly appropriate. “It was my promise to you, Dino-san,” he replied, refused to be shaken, “that I would take care of him.”

Dino kept his answer away for a long time. Tsuna counted his heartbeat in the stillness, simple chore that let him keep track on their conversation instead of sinking too deep into the mire of his thoughts. He came close to one-hundred-and-ten when silence finally gave way to a reply.

“There will be an answer,” Dino said, in a subdued voice that was anything but familiar, “when I come to Japan.”

Tsuna closed his eyes, finding it more difficult to breathe, somehow. “Thank you,” he fought to keep calm, even as he questioned his own wisdom, now, when it was all too late to do so. “Please forgive me if I have gone too far, Dino-san.”

This time, the answering laugh was genuine, if brief. “An apology may undermine everything you have built, Tsuna,” he said, not a reproach.

“Still, it’s the right thing to do.”

In Dino’s third pause, he found what the former two lacked and breathed more easily. “Vongola is your ally, as I am your friend,” he added, for good measure if not a second apology. “I hope I haven’t done anything to compromise both.”

If there was still a hint of reserve in Dino’s soft ‘thank you’, Tsuna could hardly blame him.

–

Three days before the arrival of the Cavallone entourage, Tsuna summoned Gokudera and Yamamoto to his office to share with them the news .

Gokudera’s expression was grim, but he nodded, understood, and assumed responsibility to make necessary arrangements. Yamamoto looked at him, long and hard, and then asked, if lacking his usual flippancy, whether they should consider evacuating themselves from the vicinity.

Tsuna laughed, mostly because he hoped Yamamoto had been joking. Deep down, he wondered if in fact it wasn't the voice of reason.

**_End_ **


End file.
